Do Standby buttons save or waste energy?

In theory, Standby buttons are supposed to save energy by powering almost all of the way down. When the device isn’t being used, it sucks up the bare minimum of energy to be ready to use immediately, instead of starting up from scratch. The Standby button lets the device be ready for you, the human, to use in a split second.

The problem though is this “almost shut off” still uses energy, and it adds up. And people have noticed.

A recent article in The (London) Times says that British ministers may outlaw the Standby button. Interesting.

… heating, lighting and entertainment in households is responsible for 27% of the energy used in Britain, and that a sixth of this is accounted for by electronic gadgets. But with purchases of low-price TVs, DVDs, computers and other products rising sharply, in five years gadgets will be responsible for a third of household energy use. Much of this is when they are on standby.

That’s almost 5% of the energy used in Britain coming from electronic devices.

Figures contained in the review will show that gadgets left unnecessarily on standby or connected to chargers squander electricity worth £740m each year and are responsible for 4m tonnes of excess carbon dioxide emissions each year.

The biggest culprits are not televisions but stereo systems, responsible for £290m of wasted energy, followed by video recorders, £175m, televisions, £88m, games consoles, £70m, computer monitors, £41m, DVD players, £19m, and set-top boxes, £11m. Mobile phone chargers left plugged in unnecessarily waste £47m of electricity each year, enough to supply 66,000 homes.

…

The government has rejected one proposal, from the energy company Scottish Power, that standby buttons on existing electrical products be removed or disabled. But it will work with manufacturers to “design out” standby buttons from new products… One likely recommendation for some products is that they be designed to switch themselves off.

Removing Standby buttons is the obvious drastic reaction. But the fault isn’t the Standby button providing waste. It’s the responsibility of the engineering teams to minimize electrical draw when in Standby mode. It’s a good feature, but it does need to be improved. Our global energy usage is definitely a major problem that won’t be solved by finding or securing oil fields. It’s by reducing energy usage everywhere it happens.

But if the Standby button goes extinct, eh, it happens. We’ve already seen the Stop button being slowly replaced by the Pause button in media players. It happens.