I was always told by my mom that I didn’t pay the electricity bill so I shouldn’t leave the lights/T.V. on.
My fiance, who now lives with me, leaves everything on, including the T.V., and insists that it actually conserves electricity.
I find this hard to believe… How many times in a day would you have to turn a T.V. on and off to make leaving it on use less electricity? Even when we go out to eat and don’t expect to be back for 2-3 hours… she leaves the T.V. on.
What about lights? Everytime I come home from work I have to go through the whole apartment shutting them off… every single one is on.
And don’t even get me started on the halogen lamp she always leaves on. That is NOT safe.
If this is a private residence we’re talking about, most of the lights are probably incandescent. They should be turned off, although I doubt you’ll see much of a difference on your bill unless they are all 300 watt floods. I don’t have my utility bill in front of me to do the calculations right now, but I think it costs something like 7¢ to run 10 one hundred watt bulbs for an hour. So let’s multiply that out and say that it will cost you about 98¢ a day (assuming 14 hours of lights being left on) to do that. Times 30 days… well maybe there are some real savings to consider.
What your fiance was probably thinking of was back when fluorescents were all the rage in huge office buildings, it was not cost effective to pay somebody to walk around to 300 offices and turn each light off. Leaving them on costed less than two or three hours of maintenance staff pay.
In the power conservation in general, I think you should turn them off. Even if your savings are minimal, thousands of people turning off their house lights might just be enough to make a dent in the demand on the grid, so those rolling blackouts won’t be necessary.
I’d just like to reflect on this, if I could. What I hear you saying is that if you have two TVs, one that is on and one that is off, the one that is on draws less “electricity” than the one that is off?? Have I misunderstood your dear sweet fiance’s statement? If not, do you really think it’s a good idea to have offspring with this person? (Just kidding.) (I think.)
Leaving a hologen light on is a Bad Idea, unless she wants to return to find her apartment a smoking ruin.
As for the rest, off is better than on. Fluorescent lights do take an extra surge of power on startup, so that it takes more power to turn them off for short periods than to leave them on. But the key is “short periods”; under most conditions, you’re still going to save more money if the light is off than it is on. This sort of surge may be true of other appliances, but I can’t imagine it takes less power to leave something on.
If she really wants to save energy, she should turn things off and actually unplug them, since many appliances draw power even when they’re off.
Lol… no no no. Her argument would be that if we turned one T.V. on and off throughout the day and left the 2nd T.V. on for the entire day, that the one we left on would use less electricity.
Ok, I’ve gotten enough evidence for the lights… she’s convinced on that. She says she never believed that and that she just doesn’t remember to shut them off.
The T.V. though… she says she read on a GE bill back in High School (5-6 years ago) that turning a T.V. on and off 5 times through a day uses up more energy than leaving it running for 18 hours.
This HAS to be rediculous… I can’t believe it. But she needs more proof than “the people on the board said so”. Anyone know where I can find stats? I tried google but I failed.
This is an old urban legend that has little basis for truth.
Any appliance left turned on will consume power and that power costs money.
There are a couple of circuit conditions that can apply but they are never found in domestic residences and almost never in industry due to better management of installations.
There is the belief that it costs more in staff turning lights out but when you think of security staff walking around and turning lights out as part of their normal patrol duties it does not add any signifcant time on at all.
In fact it can cost very much more since a light left on will need replacement more often and the maintenance staff time doing so plus the cost of replacement lamps will always exceed the cost of time turning the light out.
I know of one place where lights are left on most of the time but this is a hospital so it is not possible to do otherwise, the result is that more power is consumed and three staff have to be employed solely to change lamps.
I can describe the circuit conditions that would make it economic but it is fairly technical and so rare nowadays as to be hardly worth the trouble, its a good exercise for helping engineers understand a few concepts but to the public its pointless.
It costs pennies a day to run your lights or T.V. but I think it is looking at the whole picture, there are countless households doing the same thing and if everyone conserves a little it adds up to a lot.
Our biggest power user is our air conditioning, it will cost us between two and three dollars a day depending on the temperature. That’s money I am willing to spend.
An important part of this question is what damage is caused to equipment by turning it off and on. Electrical equipment that is powered on and off wears out more quickly.
For example, an incandescent bulb turned off looses value equal to about 5 minutes’ electricity. (Some years ago, at least.) A florescent bulb restarting costs 20 minutes of electricity. So, turn off an incandescent bulb that won’t be used for 5 minutes, and a florescent one that won’t be used for 20 minutes.
A really fun related question is when to turn off a computer. The problem is that some computer parts wear out more quickly being left on, while others wear most quickly being powered on and off. This subject is a great way to start a heated party conversation. It will really improve those little PC’s and Mac’s self-images to see they are so cared about.