Sky Stand By

djpaul

Sky wants to do it's bit for the envoirnment by introducing an automatic
standby mode for all of it's SkyHD and later Sky+ boxes.

Sky aims to cut the amount of power being wasted by entertainment devices
that people forget, or don't bother to switch OFF.

Sky will also introduce Auto Standby function that will kick in between 11pm
and 4am, allowing it to put people's Sky box on standby if they are not
watching it.

Full story: www.computeractive.co.uk/2186430

Easier option for Sky and better for the envoirnment would be to get rid of "you have to have a phone line connected and box powered on at all times".

I really don’t see the point of this as the standby light will still be on, and with their SKY+ and HD set top boxes the internal Hard drive LED’s and the drives themselves will still be running. I personally would much rather be able to turn off the box for both an energy saving and safety measure.

Zaphod

Murdoch Junior is big on corporate responsibility[1]



By the end of 2006 Sky had 8.441M subscribers in UK and Ireland, 2.13M of which had Sky+ along with 184,000 HD units.[2] So, forgetting about multiroom and FTV and legacy boxes, let's assume each subscriber had either a digibox or a Sky+/HD box and say 90% follow Sky's recommendation to put the box into standby each night rather than plugging it out.


Consumption for a HD box is 36W when on, 19W in standby.[3]

90% x [(6,127,000 X 8W) + (2,130,000 X 15W) + (184,000 X 19W)] = 90% X [49,016,000W + 31,950,000 + 3,496,000] = 76,015,800 Watts wasted by digiboxes while in standby. Using their own figure of 10 hours a day, that equates to 277,457,670kWh. Those small actions sure do add up.

[1] http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/irol/10/104016/CSR/BSY_CSR_2006.pdf
[2] http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/irol/10/104016/press/PR310107.pdf
[3] http://www.jointhebiggerpicture.co.uk/pdf/20_03_07_SkyCutsEnergy.pdf
[4] Their own PR guff about saving enough energy to light Wolverhampton appears to assume that their customers previously left their Sky+ and HD boxes fully powered on overnight.

steveon

I'm really impressed by the graph's and info you provided Zaphod, makes for an interesting read. I personally think its a step in the right direction by Sky enforcing an automatic Standby function into it's box's which will occur at approx 1am. It may not be much but less power consumption can only be a good thing especially when u add up all the sky+ currently on the market.

I think it was Gordon Browne in the UK that has tried to go one step further by removing the Standby function altogether on consumables in the uk??

byte

Some boxes have the auto-standby function already. I know it's on SkyHD boxes, though I don't see the option on my Sky+ box.

However, I've noticed when I put my Sky+ in standby, there's times where the Sky+ Planner then refuses to work, and needs a reboot to fix. Not sure if that's an issue with my STB, or common amongst Pace Sky+...

DMC

Happens occasionally with mine, byte

watty

One electric showering puts "standby" into context.
Without standy, the stuff would be left on.

Tumble driers, electric heaters, airconditioning, badly setup immersion heaters, electric grills / ovens left on etc is the issue, not a bunch of AV gear or even a few tungsten light bulbs.

mwrf

every little helps watty, at least they are doing something. even if it is for some good PR.

Kensington

Seems a little silly to be marketing this auto-standby feature of the boxes, and harping on about how it'll save the environment, when they're also about to launch the Anytime TV service for Sky+. This will download programmes to Sky+ PVR3 and Sky HD boxes overnight, meaning your sky+ box might aswell be on anyway as it will be recording programmes onto the hard disk for a few hours each night, requiring the hard disk etc. to be powered up and writing. Unless of course, they're not interested in the environment at all, but see this as a way of freeing up both Sky+ tuners to allow them to download as much content as possible??

ethernet

This co-incides with the launch of a new domestic meter in the UK for a visual overview of how much power each appliance in the house is using.

In the scheme of things, a digibox isn't too power-hungry but it's great to be able to have it go into standby itself, hopefully prolonging the life of the hard drive also.

JHMEG

watty wrote:

One electric showering puts "standby" into context.
Without standy, the stuff would be left on.

Tumble driers, electric heaters, airconditioning, badly setup immersion heaters, electric grills / ovens left on etc is the issue, not a bunch of AV gear or even a few tungsten light bulbs.

A bunch of AV gear multiplied by over 8 million adds up. And let's not forget that prior to Sky, people just had a TV aerial, which costs nothing to run.

I read before that all the digiboxes in the UK combined consume the equivalent power output, entirely, of a moderate oil/coal fired power station. That's not good.

Tungsten lightbulbs, multiplied by how many billions?

Tony

JHMEG wrote:

And let's not forget that prior to Sky, people just had a TV aerial, which costs nothing to run.

Not exactly true, a great deal of aerials in the Uk and Ireland use masthead amps which use power

mustang68

watty wrote:

Tumble driers, electric heaters, airconditioning, badly setup immersion heaters, electric grills / ovens left on etc is the issue, not a bunch of AV gear or even a few tungsten light bulbs.

I'm a bit horrified that my sky box uses 15w of power, thats a lot of power, when not actually doing anything!

my AV gear when all 'off' consists of the following ( I looked up most of these figures, I guesses the 3w, as all the wall warts seem to be about the same)

On Standby:
Computer + monitor: 35w
Amp: 15w
Plasma TV: 20w
Sky box: 15w
DVD player; 5w
Wii: 10w


On:
router: 3w
cable modem: 3w
Ipod dock: 3w
skype phone: 3w
Subwoofer: 10w


Thats 120w of my av gear just sitting there, when I'm at work or sleeping!! So I switch them off at the wall at night and when I go to work.

So lets do the maths
lets say you use your AV stuff 8 hours a day, the other 16 its on standby 16*365=5840 hours/year

so .12(Kw) X 5840(h) X 1.04(amount of CO2 per KwH of coal) = 728 Kilos of CO2 a year

or (my maths here is a bit shaky, I always get lost between watts) .367(kilo/Kwh of coal)*.12(Kwh)*5840(hours) = burning 257 kilos of coal a year, to keep your AV stuff on standby

Sources: http://www.ncgreenpower.com/elements/pdfs/Calculator%20Methodology.pdf
http://www.uwsp.edu/cnr/wcee/keep/Mod1/Whatis/energyresourcetables.htm
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/pns/faq.html

watty

Sky box needs to be always on as it gets SW updates in early hours of morning.

Compared with Tumble drier, dish washer, Washing machine, electric grill , oven, immersion, the Sky box is nothing really.

I get annoyed with hotels that have 3 dim energy saver lamps, you can't read, and yet only have Electric heating or even per room airconditioning. A decent halogen lamp would only be a 1% more and radiators with thermostatic valves and central heating save 30% to 60%.

Up to 30% of electric is lost in transmission, so it should NEVER be used to charge electric cars or for heating.

Electric cars can produce up to 40% more Co2 than a Diesel. It's just moved to the power station.

There was a good Guardian article about false priorities in engergy use.
Energy saver lamps on average can last half the life stated. 10% only last as long as a good filament lamp. The brightness is over stated as it gets dimmer exponetially with time. They have substantial mercury content and electronics.

watty

Most of the power of electronics gear is wasted as heat. So it slightly reduces you need for heating most of the year. You should subtract maybe 30% from the emissions.

JHMEG

mustang68 wrote:

I'm a bit horrified that my sky box uses 15w of power, thats a lot of power, when not actually doing anything!

my AV gear when all 'off' consists of the following ( I looked up most of these figures, I guesses the 3w, as all the wall warts seem to be about the same)

On Standby:
Computer + monitor: 35w
Amp: 15w
Plasma TV: 20w
Sky box: 15w
DVD player; 5w
Wii: 10w


On:
router: 3w
cable modem: 3w
Ipod dock: 3w
skype phone: 3w
Subwoofer: 10w


Thats 120w of my av gear just sitting there, when I'm at work or sleeping!! So I switch them off at the wall at night and when I go to work.

So lets do the maths
lets say you use your AV stuff 8 hours a day, the other 16 its on standby 16*365=5840 hours/year

Or 0.120 * 5840 = 700.8kw/h at 16.29c each = €114.16 just for having stuff on standby:eek:

Digibox: 0.015 * 5840 = 87.6kw/h at 16.29c each = €14.27


Worse again, some county councils, like Kildare, have the lunatic policy of requiring septic tanks to have agitators, consuming 60w 24 hours a day.
Maths: 0.06kw * 24 * 365 = 525.6kw/h per annum, at 16.29c = €85.62.:eek:

Toilet line rental perhaps?

mustang68

watty wrote:

Sky box needs to be always on as it gets SW updates in early hours of morning.
Compared with Tumble drier, dish washer, Washing machine, electric grill , oven, immersion, the Sky box is nothing really.

Thats true, however I don't run my dryer all night, *maybe* once every month, so its difficult to compare them. As the figures above indicate, my on standby AV stuff is taking about 10% of my whole electricity bill :eek:

watty wrote:

I get annoyed with hotels that have 3 dim energy saver lamps, you can't read, and yet only have Electric heating or even per room airconditioning. A decent halogen lamp would only be a 1% more and radiators with thermostatic valves and central heating save 30% to 60%.

thats true

watty wrote:

Up to 30% of electric is lost in transmission, so it should NEVER be used to charge electric cars or for heating.

I'm not really sure where you got your figure from there, the figures that I have seen for HT transmission are about 7->8% losses, the whole idea idea is to move the pollution from car to a centralised place, where pollution controls are better. It makes electric cars an ideal idea (subject to anyone coming up with a good battery), as they can be charged with renewable as well as fossil fuel.

watty wrote:

There was a good Guardian article about false priorities in engergy use.
Energy saver lamps on average can last half the life stated. 10% only last as long as a good filament lamp. The brightness is over stated as it gets dimmer exponetially with time. They have substantial mercury content and electronics.

the amount of mercury in a CFL bulb is less then the amount that would have been produced in a coal burning power station over the life of incandescent bulb, also the bulbs can be brought to be recycled, saving the mercury and electronics.

the 10% that was mentioned in the article is interesting, I've seen it somewhere before, generally its comparing cheap CFLs (which can be terrible) to "good" incandescents (which can last for ages).

i think the figure about taking 30% off because electronics heat your house, may need a bit more investigation, I've had a think about this myself;
You said that electricity shouldn't be used for heating as it is inefficient.
In the summer I rarely want my house to be warm, and need to cool it.
I don't want under my stairs to be warm, I don't sit there often.
When my equipment is in standby, I'm not in the house, or I'm sleeping

Del2005

It's still a waste of money to have all them things on standby.

Gwynston

hellboy99 wrote:

I really don’t see the point of this as the standby light will still be on, and with their SKY+ and HD set top boxes the internal Hard drive LED’s and the drives themselves will still be running.

That's not true about the hard drive is it? I've taken to switching our Sky+ box to standby at night, otherwise the drive definitely would be kept spinning as it's continually saving the currently tuned channel if Live Pause is activated.

I figured that switching to standby will stop Live Pause (and switch off the tuners?), so as long as nothing's being recorded from the planner, the drive shouldn't be needed. I notice it doesn't stop straight away, but I've not checked in the middle of the night.

ixtlan

Had to chip in...

While it's true that the digiboxes need to be on to receive software updates, Sky should be criticised for designing them this way.

It doesn't take a genius to work around this... How about timers operating when in standby to wake up the system at defined times when updates might be sent?

As regards the issue of charging electric cars, one huge advantage to this which I never see mentioned is that this is a perfect use for renewable energy. Everyone plugs in their car every night and the wind power that might never get used otherwise charges the car. Or even if the wind power isn't available the charging should be done at whatever the optimum time is. In fact I'd suggest a system where there are different electric rates depending on the availability of power. Cheapest on windy days, more expensive on quiet days etc.

Of course this is a radical way to think of power usage, and I find it annoying that the Greens don't explain the pain that people may have to endure... ie can't afford to wash clothes today as the power is too expensive... can't afford to run decorative lighting at all... The reality is that the best way to reduce power usage is to make it so expensive that people have to think twice about everything they are doing, and yet the green mantra continues to be, energy will be cheaper if it is was all green.

Ix

Gwynston

Gwynston wrote:

That's not true about the hard drive is it? I've taken to switching our Sky+ box to standby at night, otherwise the drive definitely would be kept spinning as it's continually saving the currently tuned channel if Live Pause is activated.

HDD Power modes

The typical hard drive operates in one of four modes:

Active mode: In Active mode, the hard drive reads, writes, seeks and processes host commands. Typical hard drives consume anywere between 10-2.5 watts in Active mode.

Idle mode: Idle mode reduces power consumption by turning off some of the drive electronics at the expense of a short recovery time. In one common implementation, the head is moved to a parking position, and the servo tracking function either is turned off, or operated at a reduced level of control. The disk remains spinning, the interface electronics remain ready to accept commands, and the drive will return to Active mode when a new command is received. The drive power is reduce to slightly less than 9-1 watt.

Standby mode: In Standby mode, the spindle motor is stopped, and most of the electronics are powered off. Power consumption is lowered to the range of 2-0.3 watts.

Sleep mode (this option not on digiboxes): Sleep mode is entered by a specific command, and is used for long periods (hours) of system inactivity. All electronics are powered off except those needed to respond to a wake-up command, typically requiring about 1.7-0.1 watt.


The power consumption specifications provided for a drive vary from manufacturer to manufacturer, many manufacturers just quote an average for the whole HDD family, but there can be a big increase in the power consumption of some drives.

Here's one example :

160 Gig WD Caviar SE Quiet Hard Drive ( WD1600JS )

Power Consumption

Read/Write - 9.50 Watts
Idle - 8.75 Watts
Standby - 1.60 Watts
Sleep - 1.50 Watts

Gwynston

Thanks for that hellboy

So I guess for Sky+ boxes, standby mode puts the drive into standby mode?

And if you have Live Pause activated, the drive will almost always be in active mode as long as the digibox is on?

So the drive will likely only ever get into idle mode if you deactivate Live Pause?

JHMEG

ixtlan wrote:

As regards the issue of charging electric cars, one huge advantage to this which I never see mentioned is that this is a perfect use for renewable energy. Everyone plugs in their car every night

That alone would make excellent use of the all the surplus (and thereby wasted) power being generated at night by the ESB etc.

watty

There isn't any wasted electric at night.

It's just a bit cheaper due to lower demand.

Electric cars are horribly envirnmently evil. The battery life less than 4 years.
The time to recharge.
Vandalism if you havn't got a Garage.
The additional enrgy wasted in recharging (up to 20%) and the Transmission network losses.
A Diesel engine can run on vegetable oil. Much more friendly than a Power station.

Veggie fuelled Diesels are the future, with better public transport, Jobs & shops that need less driving etc.. Not Electric cars. Electric cars are for when we invent Fusion Power Stations and solve the battery problem.

watty

Gwynston wrote:

Thanks for that hellboy

So I guess for Sky+ boxes, standby mode puts the drive into standby mode?

And if you have Live Pause activated, the drive will almost always be in active mode as long as the digibox is on?

So the drive will likely only ever get into idle mode if you deactivate Live Pause?

I'd guess so, explains tiny gap between on & standby for regular Sky box and big gap for Sky+/SkyHD, no HD to eat power on a regular Sky box.

JohnC.

Just saw a piece on Sky News, but can't seem to find it on the website. It was about BSkyB and a bunch of other companies getting together for environmental initiatives. One thing they mentioned was a new Sky receiver which apparently has no standby mode. No pictures or anything further.

Foggy43

I have noticed over the last few days that my Sky+ box has gone into 'Standby' mode by itself. Every morning I have had to turn it on. The last two nights I checked to make sure it was 'On' before going to bed. I am the last!
I turn off the TV at night and leave the box on in case any downloads come through the night.
I have the box over a year now. Just before this started at about 6pm the box went in to standby by itself a few minutes apart. I was expecting the worst but it never happened again.

Anyone else notice this? Perhaps monitor yours and see.

byte

Auto-Standby is enabled?

Check Services, Sky+ Setup, and see if you have "Auto Standby" option, and whether it's toggled on or off.

Foggy43

byte
Thank you for that!
Auto Standby is 'ON'. I didn't change that!

I wonder! My daughter is coming home from school with 'Green' and 'Conserve Energy' recently. Everything gets switched off and all plugs keep getting pulled. She knows more about the features of the Sky+ box than I do..............................
Lets turn Auto Standby to 'OFF' and keep an eye on things.

As I understand it should a update be sent to my box and the box is in Standby then it will not download? I am sure that is what Watty is saying.

watty

Standby only sleeps the HD. I'd bet the receiver is still active. Very little difference on a non-hard drive Sky box.

JohnC.

Foggy43 wrote:

As I understand it should a update be sent to my box and the box is in Standby then it will not download? I am sure that is what Watty is saying.

No, it will still receive an update even if the box is in standby. You don't need to leave it on.

Foggy43

Thankyou all for the info!

irishgeo

anybody see the dragons den program with the guys who invented the device like a plug board when you plug everything into it reduces the usage of every device on standby to 0. but the best thing was it still was unable to turn the device on again by pushing the button on the remote.

it got all 5 dragons to invest in it.

http://www.standby-saver.com/ (edit link added)

Aepos

One thing you must also remember is that the vast majority of faults on electronic equipment occur at switch on. So I tend to think that turning low standby consumption items such as TV's, set top boxes, routers etc. off and on every day would result in a lot of failures and consequent repairs or more likely replacements. Negating any saving of your pennies or the environment.


Rock on Watty.

JHMEG

watty wrote:

There isn't any wasted electric at night.

It's just a bit cheaper due to lower demand.

Electric cars are horribly envirnmently evil. The battery life less than 4 years. It's cheaper if you pay 240 euro for a nightsaver meter (luckily I got mine for free, as I got it in Oct '06).

The time to recharge.
Vandalism if you havn't got a Garage.
The additional enrgy wasted in recharging (up to 20%) and the Transmission network losses.
A Diesel engine can run on vegetable oil. Much more friendly than a Power station.

Veggie fuelled Diesels are the future, with better public transport, Jobs & shops that need less driving etc.. Not Electric cars. Electric cars are for when we invent Fusion Power Stations and solve the battery problem.

Watty, were you drunk when you posted that?

There is wasted electricity at night. Demand drops but supply can't drop to match. It's cheaper *only* if you have a €240:eek: night meter (€240 install charge since Jan '07, fortunately I got mine in mid '06)

10 year old Toyota RAV4-EVs are still running with the original batteries.

"Veggie fuelled diesels" are not the future, they are just a part of it.