Hi,

Just chaged from an Avant to BV4 and used to leave the TV and speakers in the stand-by mode (red light showing). Does anyone power off completely, or do you just leave on stand-by?

Use a;

This way you save some energy and no electric device is on while you sleep or are away, which can cause a fire.

Everything is off.

B&O products are designed to be left in standby, not switched off. For new products, they will ask you for a PIN number if they have been off for more than a certain number of hours before you can use the product fully. So I wouldn't recommend using that.

I switch everything off at the powerpoint when i leave the house, it is totally unessesary for anything to be switched on while i'm not home. Saves energy - the environment in mind. This does no harm to the electronics whatsover.

At the end of the day, you do what ever you feel works best for you. I have disabled the pin protection on my tv's (they are too heavy to steal anyway).

I didn't realise it was possible to disable the PIN protection on all B&O products. In that case it isn't a problem to switch everything off at the mains.

if it will be dormant for 2+ weeks... then off it goes!

otherwise... standby

They are designed to be left on as they use very little power 0.5 watt p/h I think and I believe that turning them on and off at the wall doesn't do the power board much good.

Cheers Nick 

Some of these auto-off systems use around 0.5w when they are running, which is not much different to a modern B&O TV on standby. Obviously, the saving becomes more significant if you have older kit or a lot of peripherals connected.

Just a thought, but most of the wasted energy will be converted to heat which is emitted into the room. In the winter this is likely to contribute to heating the room so if you kill your standby you will make up the shortfall with your home heating energy for at least part of the year. Same goes for low energy light bulbs.

Not putting this as an anti energy saving message. Just pointing out that there is rarely a simple solution to any "green" problem.

Doea the manufacturing energy emission from producing and shipping the standy killer outweigh the savings it will achieve in use? I don't know the answer but maybe someone out there does? And what's the critical standby wattage where it starts to make real sense?

Oh, the 'green issue' ! :-)

Just kidding.  But heating with electricity is by far the most inefficient way to do the job, even if it keeps your B&O a bit closer to the action.  Only 5% of the initial produced electric energy finally reaches the devices in your house.  All the rest is lost in conversion and transport.

The lifecycle analysis of the standbykiller is an other thing, that depends on a lot of parameters.  But let's keep it simple and state that the more standy you can kill, the better for the environment, unless you live in a passive house.  Then maybe electric heating with your B&O can be an option :-) 

PS: I'm fooling around a bit in my house with an energymeter and just discovered that the powersupplies of my 2 printers, 2 external harddisks and 2 routers consumed altogether 60W, day and night, even if all the device are on standby.  That's like keeping an ordinary lightbulb on all the time, just for fun...

And it's true that the old B&O devices consume quite some energy on standby.  My AV 9000 takes 25W on standby.

Kind regards
Joost 

I would recommend never switching off any of your B&O products - the most common time for your equipment to fail is when you return from holiday, re-apply the power and it won't switch on...seen it hundreds of times!

The cost of the power used it standby compared to the repair costs for power application,  stack heavily in favour of  leaving it on.

B&O products are designed to be left on in standby all the time. Most recent one do not even have a switch.

B&O have solved the "green issue" long time ago: They have 2 transformers, a big one used when the TV is on, the other one, small, used when it is in standby. So it is like have the device shown above already integrated.

The smaller transformer is designer to have a tiny consumption. It will have no impact on your bill or on the climate. You can be reassured.

I switch mine off only when I am not at home for a few days.

One thing you can do, if you have a STB Controlled by the TV you can change a setting in the STB-C to turn it off when the TV is off. That will same a lot more.

I love all these green products.

Can anyone prove to me that the energy saved by people having these things plugged in (which are still using power all the time) will ever cancel out:

The power used on in their development, PC's, printers, people driving to and from work.

Their manufacture, Factorys, building the machines to make them, making them.

Their distribution, fuel for boats, planes, vans, manufacture of packaging etc.

etc, etc.

I'm not opposed to people trying to save a bit of power, but can't help thinking a lot of these "Green" products, if you look at the bigger picture, will never save as much energy as has been used in their design, manufacture, testing, distribution, sale and disposal.

hi

i turn my avant and labs off at night and during thr day, it might not save much but it saves some and if we all did it, that some would would be a "big" some...and every little helps.

my fathers attitude to energy saving bulbs was that he could afford his electric bill..............i dont think he gets it..lol

andy

The EU will seek a ban on Standby-buttons and functions, to preserve electricity. (In the course of the lifetime of a DVD-player, 85% of the electricity is consumed by the standby-function.)

Here's an industry rep desperately seeking to defend the Standby-button.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7346313.stm

soundproof:

The EU will seek a ban on Standby-buttons and functions, to preserve electricity. (In the course of the lifetime of a DVD-player, 85% of the electricity is consumed by the standby-function.)

Here's an industry rep desperately seeking to defend the Standby-button.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7346313.stm

ha! considering i have used a dvd player in a remote theater room one time, YES -ONE TIME -in the 1 1/2 years it has been sitting there, my consumption must be 99.44%!

ouch...

i have a DVD player and STB also have to be on stand-by if i leave my set-up on, and they run hot, therefore i switch everything off (tgough i could get a seperate power board for them with a switch). I fear that leaving all this expensive equipment in standby increases the odds of a power surge.

I was not aware that switching on and off at the power point put a risk on the life of the power supplies of the electronics - myth or fact i want to know!  It sounds like an unrealistic theory.

If everyone switched their appliances off at the powerpoint, the difference has been calculated to be enormous. I don't know what it's like over there, but the issues regarding carbon emissions and the environment here are drilled into us everyday, and so they should be.

Regarding temperature, it's been 45 degrees (celcius) everyday here in the past week or so, so the heat variable is a reason to turn things off even more!

Having read all the replies so far I am left suitably confused!  I switch most things off if I am not going to use them.  Not sure of the pros and cons of it all and I am certainly NOT doing this to be "so called" green.  The only greens I know are certain vegetables, shades on a colour chart or little men from Mars! 

It makes sense to reduce one's electricty bill - but not to the detrimenet of equipment.  I would like to see some unbiased research on this topic and what "year" B&O changed their approach to low wattage standby.

Brian 

I love to be able to walk into the house and press Sat or Radio on my Beo4.
It is designed to receive a remote signal at all times.
Switching off at the mains is not an option for me.
The amount of energy used to keep my equipment in standby for a year, would probably be swallowed up by one journey to Tesco for a pint of milk!

I think I can cope.

Andy T.

Xseries:

I would like to see some unbiased research on this topic

Look at the specs for you products, on the B&O web site:

For example, the BV7 says: "POWER CONSUMPTION Typical: 99W; standby: 0.8W".

Also you can touch your products while off. Any energy wasted would turn to heat. You products on standby are cold.

Here is the official B&O report about environmental impact of their products:

http://www.bang-olufsen.com/Userfiles/File/Corporate_info/environment/Environmental_report_07_08.pdf

andy:

hi

i turn my avant and labs off at night and during thr day, it might not save much but it saves some and if we all did it, that some would would be a "big" some...and every little helps.

my fathers attitude to energy saving bulbs was that he could afford his electric bill..............i dont think he gets it..lol

 

andy

No, and neither do I!!!!!!!

The whole point of switching the light on is so you can see. What's the point in switching the light on and still not be able to see???

If you can read the makers name on a bulb when it is switched on then the bulb is not worth having - and that applies to all the low energy bulbs that I have come across so far.

Bloody green "do gooders" really get me going!!!!!

And yes, Dave from Australia, all my stuff is on standby - all of the time!

However, I am sufficiently intelligent to appreciate that global warming is real, but what I do with my own electrical home alliances doth pale into the far horizon when compared to industry and automobiles etc.

The energy saving bulbs are a joke. The light is awful and makes everybody looks like they are ill.

They take a while to turn on. So if I cross the corridor, they don't have the time turn on by the time I have reached the other side. You cannot dim them (with an LC2 for example).

They require a lot more energy to produce and contain heavy metals such as mecury.

They have been pushed only because of lobbying from big companies, but they are far from being greener.

When LED lights become more powerful, then it will be another story.

Beolab 5 + BS9000 + BV7 draws together 4W while at standby...

1 day worth of energy would be: 4W X 24h = 96Wh

However KWH is what atleast my electrical bill is measured in so we have to divide 96Wh with 1000.

We end up with 0,096KWH.

Comparing this to lightbulbs.

In my home  (in winter time, you may know as of current the sun rises and sets in the south of Finland at 8.33AM and 4.34PM)

So when one normally gets home from work you have to put lights on. Usually I have the following amount of lights on, 25w+60w+60w+60w+40w+10w+15w This will add up to 270w.

I reckon I have these light on from about 5PM until midnight, of course variations, but let's just say this is a middle way, total of 7 hours.

270W x 7h is 1870wh

Divided by 1000

is 1.870kwh

Let's compare the standby time of 24h worth of Beo equipment to my average energy usage in only lights...

B&O standby 0,096 kwh (24h)

My use of lights, just not to have to live in the dark 1,870 kwh (7h)

I'm just hinting at we should seek energy savings perhaps somewhere else than in our Beo's products standby.

Here's a funny link about mobile phone chargers... 

http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/sustainable/charger/

My catalogue for the Avant says it uses less than 2.5 watts on standby.  There is no data for BS5500, BS 6500 or BS 7000, Pentas etc.  Whilst the very latest items may be using less than 0.5 watt - how about the middle aged products?

Brian

First up - I agree that energy saving bulbs emit an unpleasant and cold light. I collect 1960s and 70s lamps and light fittings, and I use incandescent bulbs in them all because: a) they are the only ones small enough to fit in most cases, and b) the light they emit is much warmer and is available instantly from turning them on. I really look forward to the day when energy savers are small enough to be practicable in all domestic fittings.

What I do take issue with is all the flat-earthers coming along with the quite fanciful and basically plain bo@£$%ks notion that 'what I do in my own home with my electrical consumption is my business and mine alone'. No, it is not. Where do you think the energy comes from to power the f£$%ing appliances for eff's sake!! It comes FROM A MASSIVE POWER STATION DUMPING TONNES OF CO2 INTO THE ATMOSPHERE. It doesn't matter whether or not you can afford to pay your bills, or whether or not you take 1,2 or 10 cheap flights a year, or whether you get in your car to go to the local shops, or even whether all your clothes are made out of organic hemp-based derivatives. What matters is that all our actions make a difference in one way or another. I use my older lamps less and less because of the fact that they use incandescent bulbs - I know it's a drop in the ocean, but I bet the same people here moaning about how one individual's consumption is nothing when set against that of the majority would take issue with, for example, a 'benefits scrounger' accessing a shed load of public goods (benefits, libraries, healthcare, roads, street lighting, waste disposal, I could go on...) paid for by others. It's the same argument - ask the 'benefit scrounger'. They'll tell you what they're doing is a drop in the ocean too.

If you don't give a two hoots about the environment, then please be honest enough to say it upfront, rather than churning out a load of trite factoids that do not shore up your argument to the slightest degree. Fact: my Avant has a big red power switch to turn it off. If it wasn't meant to be used, then why is it there?