/travel/ireland/Power Down
One of the cool things in my flat, and in normal construction in Dublin is that I can reduce the electricity usage in my flat to zero. Not "almost" zero or "probably" zero, but zero.
Every outlet has a little switch by it. The oven has a big switch to turn the whole thing off. The immersion (water) heater can be switched off, and so can the lights. If you do this, everything is off, except the heat, which I don't control.
But there's more. TVs here have three states: on, standby, and off. In the off state, the power-draw is zero whereas in the standby state it's enough to listen for the remote. My amp, two, has three similar states.
That's not all! The microwave has no LED clock, nor a digital power-drawing panel. Every appliance has a clear efficiency rating. Lightbulbs are on a one to nine scale, I think, whereas fridges are one to five.
These savings are small, but if you're otherwise careful with power, they're significant. And mostly I think they're interesting because they represent a smooth transition: from a relatively impoverished past where these things were driven by necessity, to a progressive future where these things are (I presume) driven by EU-based standards. There was no gap between these, as far as I can tell, and indeed there seems to have been overlap.
Time to suspend my laptop, turn off the lights, and go to bed.
