How do people feel about leaving their kit on 24/7? Do others feel that it is at odds with ecological concerns we are facing today?
(to make matters worse I have 2 stacks burning day and night )
In idle mode not playing music my full system consume around 60W. When music is played a few watts more. So I would not even notice on my total consumption if it is on or off. Lowering the temperature 1 degree in my house have far greater impact.
I’m relaxed about it. It’s my one indulgence. In other areas of my life I do what I can.
Naim’s latest stuff has energy saving ‘standby’ modes. But everything I desire from Naim has already been made. In that sense, their carbon footprints have already been expended. So if I was to go for something new with standby modes, whole new carbon footprints would have to be spent in acquisition of materials and manufacture, adding to the total global burden. I suspect that in terms of total life cycle analysis, less carbon is expended in just getting my existing stuff serviced when I need to, rather than buying energy saving new gear. But I would need a university professor somewhere to back this up.
If you have a supplier of 100% renewable energy, it’s not such an issue.
Ok - well that makes me feel a bit better! In an age where I’m packing the kids off to school on the bus to be ecological, I was starting to feel a little conflicted when I see those lights glowing constantly
Very true.
But how?
I think even if all your electrical energy is all renewable, saving energy means that the energy saved goes back into the pool, and therefore may prevent gas being burnt.
I’m not concerned with the current theoretical ecological crisis.
Yes and most of those 60w heat up the house in winter time .
Just because your supplier is 100% renewable does not make the electricity your consuming at any one time renewable. I’m not saying you’ve fallen prey, but there’s a lot of marketing bollox around this. It’s great there’s more and more renewables feeding the grid these days but people need to be aware and realistic.
Having them on 24/7 make the equipment last longer, so better for the environment.
The worts thing for electronics is to be switched on an off.
Day 1
18 MW generated by Wind, 2 MW of GAS
Now Nice Supplier uses 10 MW of wind
Bad supplier uses 8 MW wind and 2 MW Gas
Day 2
Nice Naim Geek who has a mansion and uses a Good Supplier turns off his 5 Naim Statements overnight and saved 1 MW
Now Nice Supplier uses 9 MW of wind
Bad supplier uses 8 MW wind and only 1 MW Gas
Hence Gas saving of 1 MW
Saying that I go with “leave it on”, so it always sounds its best, and less wear and tear in powering up an Olive based system. Also I have Solar panels to help, and happy that the heat generated keeps the chill off the room in winter.
Not at all.
Equipment life at higher temperatures is shorter. Who am I not to trust Naim engineers when they say that every 10 degrees temperature increase halves the life of your Naim internal power components.
So apart from wasting energy, leaving your hifi always on means reduced service intervals (of course meaning more waste) if you would like to keep it at top performance - or if not - it would perform suboptimally sooner (i.e. also sound worse sooner).
I think you are wrong.The worts thing for electronics is to be switched on an off.
well, sure!
But digital stuff is about switching on and off!
It’s always good to avoid digital as much as possible
I turn off the power amps on my active ATC speakers when not listening to them. That’s ATC’s recommendation, I believe, and they don’t take long to come on song. If left on, they do get pretty warm, so must be wasting a fair bit of energy. OTOH, the streamer stays on, but in standby when not being used.
The Atom and Muso QB are in standby when not in use.
Roger
It depends how long you play and how long idle! If you play for an average of, say, 6 hours a day, then 18 hours idle, 60W is virtually 400 units (kWh) per year.
In monetary terms today, it will depend where you live, and the energy cost, but at, say, 35p per unit, 400 units is about £140 a year. (To me that is not trivial.) Of course if you use 18 hours a day average then the idle cost is 1/3rd of that. As for carbon dioxide, UK official data says average is 0.233 kg/unit of electricity generated, so approaching 100kg CO2. (Obviously if you are fortunate enough to have your own solar generation with an excess it would cost nothing and be non polluting.)