Ensuring you don’t leave your electrical equipment on standby is a vital factor in reducing your personal CO2 emissions - especially considering that a television left on standby can still drain up to 40% of the power it uses when it’s switched on. But now two businessmen, appearing on BBC’s popular ‘Dragons’ Den’ programme, appear to have solved the problem.
Inventors Peter Ensinger and David Baker of Eco Tech UK, who are looking for £100,000 of investment from the ‘dragons’ in return for a 15% stake in their company, went on the show with their invention the ‘Standby Saver’. This new technology allows TV viewers to turn their sets off at the remote safe in the knowledge that no power is being used while the TV in on standby.
Citing rising electricity bills and concerns about climate change as being major incentive for sales, they unveiled their device, which they claim has a potential market of all Britain’s 35 million households, and could potentially save 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 per year.
The normally impassive ‘Dragons’ were mightily impressed with the ‘Standby Saver’, especially as the designers claim to have an exclusive patent. In theory, the device (which currently works externally to electronic devices) could be integrated and included at the point of manufacture, potentially earning the developers a small fortune.
One ‘Dragon’ said that business folk like themselves “can’t ignore the drive of the green issue,” while investor Duncan Ballantyne added, “I’m only interested because of the possible environmental savings.”
For the first time in the history of ‘Dragons’ Den’, all five ‘Dragons’ agreed that the project was a brilliant idea, with each agreeing to invest £20,000 each in exchange for 10% of the company.
Click here for Dragons’ Den webpage
It is great inventions from grass roots companies like this that will really make the difference. There is money to be made in green products - and energy saving devices such as this will make an important contribution to reducing domestic carbon emissions. I hope the govt or a large manufacturer, subsidise the price of such innovations that really make a difference.
Well done Peter and David
Comment by Penney Poyzer — March 25, 2007 @ 7:20 pm
xxx
Comment by Penney Poyzer — March 25, 2007 @ 7:21 pm
Nice site! kabababrubarta
Comment by kabababrubarta — March 27, 2007 @ 12:22 am
looks really good. everyone can reduce there electrican bill by up to 50% just by turning everything off at the mains and buying energyefficent light bulbs. check my website out:
http://www.piczo.com/paynemark
Comment by mark — March 27, 2007 @ 2:18 pm
looks gd
Comment by mark payne — March 27, 2007 @ 2:25 pm
Great to see environmental issues playing a role in business and in the right way: investments being made in this area on their commercial merits.
Comment by Caspar Craven — March 27, 2007 @ 5:46 pm
The energy to power the Standby Saver has to come from somewhere. It’s essentially exactly the same standby circuit inside a television, but run from an (inefficient) rechargeable battery.
Comment by Paul — March 31, 2007 @ 7:02 pm
Agree with the above comment, this is a bit of a con and actually increses standby wastage by around 15%. It’s like claiming a mobile phone dosen’t use any energy because while in use it’s not taking any power from the mains, disregarding the fact it was charged up earlier. 5 Dragons with egg on their faces.
Comment by Oli — April 5, 2007 @ 7:09 pm
Of course it doesn’t increase power wastage, and the standby mode is very different to your TV. For a start your TV doesnt have a big battery inside it, it just shuts down some of the TV functions so it uses less power. The TV standby power is limited by the minimum load of the PSU it uses.
The charging of a small battery, like one on your motherboard, is a lot less than the charging needed for your phone, as it does not need the power for video, camera, voice recording, making phone calls…. the list goes on. The charging of the battery for the design will use hundreds of times less power than just one of your appliances on standby.
Do your research before trying to second guess an accomplished electronic engineer on the use of power in electronics!!!
Comment by Ollie — April 6, 2007 @ 2:23 am
eh? There’s no way that enery savings can be made by powering anything from a re-chargeable battery. I may not be an electrical engineer but I know for a fact that you can only get as much electricity out as you’ve put in, ie you can’t magic extra power out of nowhere. Maybe true that TV’s are inefficient when running in standby mode. If this is the case then surely tv’s need to be better designed so that standby mode will run efficiently from the mains. There is no place for a re-chargeble battery in solving this problem.
Comment by Oli — April 6, 2007 @ 11:46 pm
You misunderstand the point…
A TV Power Supply has a minimum and maximum load, this means that it cannot operate using only a tiny amount of electricity… its not possible due to the constraints of the PSU. The rechargable battery is only used in the RF receiver circuit so the remotes will still work.
Putting it in a ridiculous way, why pay 12 people to change a light bulb when you could just pay 1? Yes the battery uses electricity to charge…. but it uses hundreds of times less energy than the current standby method
And when you say TV’s need to be designed better to run more efficiently in standby mode, what do you think this design does? it does exactly that - which is why the dragons were interested about the design patent for including it into TVs.
And just a side note…
“Iknow for a fact that you can only get as much electricity out as you’ve put in”
That is a silly statement… Otherwise generating electricity would be a thankless task.
U may wish to apply that logic to energy - NOT electricity.
Comment by Ollie — April 7, 2007 @ 3:31 am
I think you are both missing the point.
1. OK So it has a battery and to say that it eliminates the standby power usage is untrue - it does however reduce this waste.
2. This device may help you save money does it certainly does not save the environment. Think about manufacturing 30 million rechargeable batteries, 30millon PCBs, 30million chips etc (silicon chip manufacturing is fairly energy consuming), 30 million plastic moulding and all the other bits.
3. These types of device have been on dragons den before, what is different here is that the dragons were interested in the patent which could be worded so that any manufacturer of any consumer goods trying to claim that they have circuitry to reduce standby power may have to pay royalties.
It’s all about money - not the environment – why does every one say this product is a GOOD thing
Comment by SilentBob — April 21, 2007 @ 4:40 pm
Saw the programme, liked the product, went to the website www.standby-saver.co.uk, paid my money and nothing has appeared and no way of getting in touch with the seller. I think this is a fraud site, DON’T GET CONNED
Comment by Neil — April 23, 2007 @ 10:45 am
What empirical evidence have you that a standby on a television set emits co2.
Secondly even if it does, it does not amount to the same quantities that are emitted by people breathing out CO2 whilst watching the television.
Comment by Chris F J Cyrnik — June 24, 2007 @ 5:12 pm
Chris F J Cyrnik. The CO2 emitted comes from creating the energy to power, i.e. burning gas and coal. It is a well known fact devices on standby use power, thus leading to unneccesary CO2 emissions.
Humans only emit tiny proportion in each breath as CO2, IIRC about 5% (remember, CO2 in the atmosphere is 0.04%).
Comment by Frodo — April 17, 2008 @ 3:54 pm