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1-Watt Plan

Posted: Mon Oct 23, 2006 6:12 pm
by UBT - Timbo
Hi all,

In this day of so-called environmentally friendly products, it's nice to know that someone somewhere is trying an initiative that hopefully will help the World to reduce it's reliance on power and hence save us all money and resources.

The 1-Watt Plan is an idea (first concocted in 1999) to get manufacturers to reduce the power consumption of their products (when in stand-by mode) to no more than 1 Watt.

Read this:

Standby Power Use and the IEA “1-Watt Plan”
http://www.iea.org/textbase/papers/2005 ... y_fact.pdf

(document is just 11 kb).

It's still a viable propostion - just a shame that many brands have not endorsed it.

regards

Tim

Posted: Mon Oct 23, 2006 6:18 pm
by UBT - Halifax-lad
Well if our Government gets its way there will be no standby buttons allowed on any new appliances, which is a good idea really

Posted: Mon Oct 23, 2006 6:34 pm
by UBT - Timbo
UBT - Halifax--lad wrote:Well if our Government gets its way there will be no standby buttons allowed on any new appliances, which is a good idea really
Agreed - it's was only human laziness, that made it a "feature" to have a remote control that enabled you to switch products (such as TV's) on and off from the comfort of your armchair.

But nowadays, it's got less to do with "features" and "consumer requirements" and more to do with manufacturers saving money by not needing individual safety approval for each and every country-specific product. Now they just need to manufacture one version of each product and then chuck in whatever power supply they need for a particular market.

This saves them money as the power supply approval is paid for by the 3rd party supplier and not the brand name....

regards

Tim

Posted: Wed Oct 25, 2006 10:46 am
by UBT - Rick Horn
I can see a few problems with the idea of not having standby buttons on appliances. It could cause some headaches for the disabled or the elderly.

Poor granny, grovelling on her knees trying to switch on the VCR or DVD. The blind or the partially sighted would also be affected. I think the idea has to be thought out carefully before the nanny state makes any decision.