This month I've been trying to get to grips with standby power. I've been asked by many people what to do about it and here's my advice which could save you pots of cash.

The basics are this, you pay for electricity in watt hours. That is to say if you have an appliance that uses 1 watt and it runs for one hour then that's one watt hour. A kilowatt hour is one unit of electricity which costs around 10p.

The problem with standby power is that appliances vary greatly. Some TVs my use almost the same power to run as they do on standby, some are more efficient. One way to find out how much your devices use is to turn everything off and see how much your meter is spinning, then put one appliance on standby and see what difference it makes. You may have heard of electricity monitors that can be used to monitor how much electricity you're using.

This monitor is easy to fit and use and you'll be surprised at how much various appliances use. Once you've used one you'll be able to make informed decisions on which appliances to keep switched off. Clearly the best option is to switch everything off. Using an extension lead with a switch means you can turn several appliances off at once.

Using these monitors can easily save the cost of buying one within a year or less.

If you have any questions about power consumption then please Contact Us.