Posts Tagged ‘energenie’

That is when you press the on/off button on the TV remote…

The moment the Energenie people asked me if I’d be interested in reviewing a couple of gadgets that help you save energy I remember thinking “ummm… that has potential…” the moment they told me that one of them powers down the whole home entertainment system at the touch of the TV’s stand by button, I thought “yayyyy I can now be lazy and just turn the TV off at the remote!!!” (admit it… who likes to have to walk wall the way to the TV to turn on/off the button every time? Doesn;t it defeat the point of having a REMOTE control???)

And I was right!!!

They have sent me a some of their stuff to play with and let you know how it works.

The first one to come out of the box and to be connected to the TV was of course the AV Automatic Standby Shut-down that does just that: Turns off the equipment you left on standby (not just the TV, but everything connected to it) whenever you put the TV on Standby.

It was pretty easy to install, just plug the TV, DVD player, Freeview/Cable box, games consoles etc into one of the controlled sockets of the Standby Shutdown (if there’s any equipment that needs to be plugged in constantly there is an extra socket for it on the unit), stick the IR receiver on the front panel of the TV and start the power learning sequence.

During the Power Learning mode the unit will learn how much energy the equipment plugged into it spends so whenever you put your TV on standby and the unit will shut down the rest of the set in 1 minute.

Instant power saving without having to get up to push the button on the TV.

The only problem you might have is if your beloved wife still insists on turning the button on the TV set off…

Simple uh???

The other one they sent me was the Appliance Power Meter.

The Energy Saving Power Meter will measure the energy use (and calculate costs) of running household appliances. This helps you lower your power bill and reduce carbon emissions, as you discover which appliances are the worst energy offenders and then work out ways to limit their use.

I have to admit that I am not disciplined enough to use that one and make any sense of it as I usually assume a more live and let live posture to life… but The Wife LOVED that one out of the 2 gadgets the Energenie people sent. Yeah… She’s the one that does all our account balancing, document reading and reviewing, etc etc etc… I’m useless at that…

So I am going to use her own words to describe it after she test-drove it:

I don’t understand what it is supposed to do either. I suppose it is great if you want to measure and compare 2 ways to use an appliance. Am I right?

In the words of the Master.

But I am supposed it is a great tool in a “go green” house… not that we don’t go green… we recycle and we are venturing into cloth nappies… and we are growing our own veg… see… we are green…ish… don’t judge!

Energenie has a whole range of other products that you can fin on their website (www.energenie4u.co.uk) and the AV Automatic Shutdown sells for £15.99 and the Appliance Power Meter goes for £10.99 and they are really great buys if you are really considering to go green!

Hasta La Vista.