Posted by Kromey at 7:04pm Feb 6 '12In the spirit of Four's "Adventures in energy frugality", I'm thinking about getting one of those "smart" surge protectors for our newly-enhanced entertainment center.
Our recent acquisition of an Energy Star-rated LED TV should actually cut our power consumption in that regard somewhat, although we added an external speaker system, so not sure how much actual savings will be had there...
Which leads to the "smart" surge protector -- simply cut power entirely to devices when the TV is turned off. This would include the PS3, the XBox 360, the Wii, and the speakers. Devices not controlled by this would be the DVR, the cable modem, the network switch, the router, and [private]'s computer. The speakers may switch to not being controlled by this later, however, because one thing we'd like to do is be able to play music through them (e.g. from the cable music channel) without the TV being on, although the TV does have an option to turn off the display but keep the audio (although it's not convenient to get to).
So, anyone have experience with these things? Do they work as advertised? Am I likely to notice a difference in power consumption by cutting off the aforementioned phantom loads?
Our recent acquisition of an Energy Star-rated LED TV should actually cut our power consumption in that regard somewhat, although we added an external speaker system, so not sure how much actual savings will be had there...
Which leads to the "smart" surge protector -- simply cut power entirely to devices when the TV is turned off. This would include the PS3, the XBox 360, the Wii, and the speakers. Devices not controlled by this would be the DVR, the cable modem, the network switch, the router, and [private]'s computer. The speakers may switch to not being controlled by this later, however, because one thing we'd like to do is be able to play music through them (e.g. from the cable music channel) without the TV being on, although the TV does have an option to turn off the display but keep the audio (although it's not convenient to get to).
So, anyone have experience with these things? Do they work as advertised? Am I likely to notice a difference in power consumption by cutting off the aforementioned phantom loads?
"Smart" surge protectors - Kromey