WE ARE LOOKING AROUND the house to see what we can cut during the austere years ahead and that exercise has resulted in us finding things that we keep powered all the time.
I cannot imagine cutting off our wifi router. It runs every hour of every day, even when we're away. That's because there's always some sort of back-up running somewhere in the home and those cherished bytes float through the house all the way up to the cloud.
We also keep the fridge running--who doesn't? But we have learned to shut down the television and got a power strip that allows us to cut off digital receivers. And although at least one of our mobile phones is always turned on, it's rare to find both of iPod Touches powered off.
I'm trying to figure out how much all this costs to run but I doubt it's more than three kilowatt hours per month.
Photo shot of our long-serving Netopia router with my Sony Xperia Arc.
