Yesterday I decided to find out how much the TV costs when I leave it on standby.
I must confess that I leave it on standby all the time, even when I'm away at a tennis tournament. I plugged the EDF Energy EcoManager in and I could see straight away that it was burning around £3 to £4 a day. It's already had an impact as I'm turning my bedroom TV off at the plug – and leaving the one in the living room off pretty much all the time because I hardly use it.
My energy saving mission is also rubbing off on my sister. We're both going around the house looking at where we can use EcoManager to switch things off.
We've realised that we've had appliances permanently plugged in in the spare bedroom so we've decided to pull all the plugs out. The one thing I'm pleased about is that the internet hub doesn't consume much electricity. I haven't turned it off since we got it, so I was a bit scared that it's been unwittingly costing me hundreds of pounds.
But it doesn't actually cost that much – I was quite relieved as it's the cheapest appliance that I've tried so far. It means I'm going to carry on leaving it on, so I don't have to go into the garage to turn it on and off all the time. I suppose that's one of the good things about knowing how much electricity something uses – if it was really expensive I suppose I would make the effort to turn it off. I still haven't put a wash on ... I'm going to wait until I've run out of clean kit.
About the author
Marc is a full-time wheelchair tennis player and Paralympic hopeful. He lives in west London with his sister in a four-bedroomed house. His most guilty energy habits are washing his tennis kit every day and leaving his TV, PlayStation and DVD on standby. EDF Energy is working with athletes such as Marc to turn ParalympicsGB into a truly "green team" ahead of 2012.
