I’ve been slowly going round the living room trying to work out where I should worry about power draw from stuff and where I shouldn’t. Here’s the results of a slightly unscientific experiment. Where I’ve quoted a range of figures it’s to show the variation

Amongst this data there are a few surprises. Why does the TV draw 9.6W in standby, what’s it doing? I’m pleasantly surprised that the PVR draws less than 10W given that it still has to decode TV signals in standby. Interestingly the combined power of the PVR and the aerial amplifier was less than the power of just the PVR. I’m assuming that the PVR’s internal amplifier is less efficient that the separate one.

Finally, I haven’t put this in the table but…. I was surprised how much the router was taking, I would have expected it to be less than 10W, in doing some of the testing I turned the router off, the power meter read 14W. Pulling the power cable out of the back of the router didn’t decrease this value. So just the PSU for the router (a standard 12V power brick) draws 14W even when it’s supplying no current. I find that quite shocking given that I’ve been involved with designs to run Linux on a PowerPC with DDR, memory etc. in less than 5W

Anyway. The idea is that you buy either carbon neutral fuels (wood because it only releases the amount of CO2 that is absorbed when it was alive) or the other more usual way is you pay to have trees planted to offset the amouth of CO2 you produce from your car, house etc.

My concern about this point of view is that (if you believe that we need to reduce the amount of CO2 and have a seat on the eco-bandwagon) it seems like an excuse to rid yourself of the guilt without any effort. The message seems to be ‘flying is ok because, even though there are more environmentally friendly ways of travelling, you bought some trees so that’s fine’. Surely people should be looking at how they live their lives. Anyone actually bothered would surely not fly wouldn’t they?

The reason I bring this up is because I saw a different way of approaching it. Electricity companies often offer Green Electricity, those either offset as above or (have an equivalent amount) produced from renewable sources. Ebico (found via Hippy Shopper) takes a different approach. They buy Carbon credits from other companies forcing other manufacturers to produce less. This way of doing things may actually result in less CO2 being produced in the first place.

After all Reduce is first in the oft-quoted 3 R’s of greeness (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle)

Many of the pledges were things I already do. I recently bought energy-saving lightbulbs so only one bulb in our flat is of the convensional kind (and that only used for all of 1 minute a week; it’s in a cupboard). I also donate blood and I’m going to a session on the 27th. I buy fairtrade tea (although Adam might have a few things to say on this) and more environmentally friendly cleaning products. I also recycle as much as possible. I also give to both Water Aid and Oxfam

Apologies for the above as it makes me sound like a holier-than-thou pillock. But my point is that I created a new one.

So what’s the point of this? Well anyone fancy registering as a bone marrow donor?.