Jaffa's Green Blog

For the not so nerdy people out there, a NAS is a Network Attached Storage device. It's effectively a hard disk with a network plug on it, so you can access the data without needing  PC.

For many, this would have no use whatsoever - but if you want an easy way to access your stored music, videos or photos without having to keep a PC whirring 24 hours a day then it can come in quite handy.


As, for numerous reasons, I have pretty serious storage demands I upgraded to the Infrant ReadyNAS about a year ago. This allows internal space for up to 4 hard drives to be added - in my case 4 x 1.0TB Hitachi drives giving me around 3000GB of usable space in a RAID5 configuration.

Clearly with 4 big hard drives, power consumption isn't going to be as low as it might be but just how much power does the ReadyNAS use?

I shut the system down, probably the first time in about a year, connected up the power tester and booted it back up. On standby, before I turned on the device properly, we registered a 2-3 Watt power draw from the supply, around 0.04amps.

One touch of the power button and it jumped up to 36 Watts, then 38 Watts. The hard drives are initialised one at a time, initially drawing a huge amount of power and then taking less as they get up to speed. The power meter started climbing, 45W, 56W, 61W, 66W, 70W, 76W, between all of these measurements dropping back down a little.

All drives initialised and fully booted, the ReadyNAS draws a total of 67 Watts, about half that of a basic PC of the same age. Not too bad really from a device holding 4000GB of drives. With the use of more modern "green" hard disks, this figure could be a little lower too.

But how will it compare in our Olympic final of NAS drives when put up against the Buffalo Terastation and Ripfactory Ripserver? Stay tuned...

It's big and it's old and my tape measure tells me it's nearly 2 feet deep, but I did love my old TV. 32inches, 100Hz, widescreen etc but there comes a point where you have to replace these things.



There's a lot of information in the press about  how devices, like old televisions, use a lot of power on standby. They claim modern TVs are much better in this regard, but are these claims true? Or is it a big eco-hoax to get you to buy a new TV?

Well lets look at the results for my old CRT then.

Plugged up, turned on and warmed up a little we get a pretty constant power consumption of 110 Watts. For future comparison, with little statistical meaning whatsoever, we'll also record this as 3.44 Watts per inch of display. We'll compare this to other screens around the house.

But how well does it perform on standby? I bought this TV back in summer '99 making it 9 years old. Not old old but far from young. Green crusaders claims that TVs can use around 20% of there power on standby. A quick press on the remote red button, ker click, and the relay switches off leaving just the red standby light. Last chance to get your guess in...

On standby, the 32" Panasonic TV gives us a power consumption figure of... ONE WATT! It's not exactly the big 20% figure we might have expected though is it? Of course, most people have a TV and if just 2000 homes leave there appliance on standby it's equivalent to boiling a kettle. I'm still pushing the merits of turning it off at the wall but I'll admit that I'm surprised the standby power consumption was so low.

Sincere apologies for the lack of recent updates but I kinda had something important to do...I got married!



We had a fantastic day (the bridesmaids, groomsmen and even the cake were dressed in the theme green colour) followed by a 3 week Honeymoon including a city break tour of Europe...not by plane though. Instead of doing numerous eco questionable flights within Europe, we drove the full distance in a hybrid vehicle. The results were rather impressive and, based on the journey, it's safe to say the hybrid model is easily 10-15mpg better than it's standard petrol equivalent.

Thanks to all those of you who dropped me a line to ask if everything is OK and check if the site is still live, it certainly is. In fact, according to my meter, it's running at 244volts...time to do some testing :)

I connected the Sonos ZP80 digital music player to my electricity meter and the first thing I saw was a ZERO watt measurement.
 
Surely something is wrong, there's no way this unit could have a power consumption of <1W when on standby?

I was right, something was wrong...the flashing white light on the unit confirmed the unit was still booting up and wasn't at full consumption just yet.



The Sonos ZP80 ZonePlayer is the baby brother of the Sonos ZP100 that I tested in a previous review here on Jaffa's Green Blog. Gone are the 50W amplifier, speaker bindings and large size, replaced by a tiny little case with just audio outputs to feed into powered speakers or your existing hifi. For those who prefer a higher quality link, both co-ax and optical digital outputs are supplied.

The ZP80 followed 2 years after the launch of the ZP100 ZonePlayer after numerous owners had requested a small form factor device with digital outputs for connecting to their existing hifi or home cinema systems.

In theory, with a smaller power supply, it's likely to save power too...although it still contains all the same SonosNet wireless mesh technology, ethernet switch and Linux based internal software.

So how did it compare to it's big brother in the power consumption tests? Read on...

Continue Reading "Test...is this thing on? Sonos ZP80 Review" »

Almost exactly three years ago, on my old blog, I wrote about a new drinks maker called Tassimo.

Three years later and the device is far from new but still well marketed. It's still one of the more popular 'pod' style drinks makers and I'm actually on my second device as the previous one died a horrible death sometime earlier this year. It still worked, but wouldn't stop boiling the water randomly. We declared it unsafe, threw it in the trash, took a good look at other alternatives and ended up buying the same again.



Interestingly, before I bought the first unit, I read a few reviews that said the Tassimo made good drinks but many reviewers, including myself, commented that the Hot Chocolate had an unusual chemical after taste. Over the period of ownership I'd forgotten about this and assumed I'd got used to it. When we purchased the replacement unit, sadly the original was out of warranty, I noticed a return of the after-taste. I can only assume this is a "new" taste which goes away with time as the solvents used to clean the device in the factory are rinsed away.

Pod style hot drinks makers have some real added convenience. As you only boil enough water for one cup, making a drink is quick and easy. The system heats a pre-defined amount of water in it's boiler and then pumps it at pressure through the Tassimo T-Disc which brews and dispenses coffee, tea, hot chocolate or even frothy milk.

Of course, from the perspective of the eco conscious, heating just enough hot water is a lot more energy efficient...or is it? What is the power consumption of the Tassimo coffee maker? This is why you read Jaffa's Green Blog.

Continue Reading "Tassimo - Fancy a Cuppa?" »

We've all read in the press and seen adverts on the TV about turning it down to thirty.

This refers to your washing machine and using programmes at lower temperatures. The days of the boil wash are pretty much gone and most people spend their time doing wash loads at 40 degrees Celcius. Modern detergents claim that they work just as well at 30 degrees and that by turning down to the lower temperature that the power saved would be enough to save the planet. If everybody in the UK turned down to thirty we'd save enough power to light all the homes in Belgium, or something like that.

But how true are these claims? Will turning down to 30 really save a significant amount of power, or will it just sell a load of compatible detergent?

Continue Reading "Does Turning Down to 30 work?" »

Over at treehugger.com, Alan Graham poses the question "How Green is your music?".

He exposes details of his own system which incorporates various components but what caught my eye was his use of the Sonos Digital Music System. I use this Sonos multi-room system myself in several areas of the house so it was on my list of gadgets to test but, as Alan doesn't have exist power consumption figures himself, I thought it was time to bump it up the list and get it tested.



I got some surprising results...

Continue Reading "Sonos ZP100" »

Do you have a modern mobile phone? Does it have 3G? If so, you could be wasting energy without even knowing it.

On a daily basis, I use a Nokia E90 Communicator. It's a powerful piece of kit, 2 large colour LCD screens, stereo sound...everything you need to really drain some power. It has a large high capacity battery to compensate, but battery power isn't free...it needs to be recharged. Obviously the longer you can make the battery last between recharges, the better.

Most people know that functions like Bluetooth drain the battery a little quicker, especially on older phones that adopted the technology in it's early days. Turning Bluetooth off can saves some battery life but, in reality, it's impractical to keep turning if off/on as needed. You don't want to be driving down the road, hear the phone ring and then realise that you're not connected to your car kit.

You can change the timeout settings on your phone display so the backlight turns out quicker, saving a bit more battery life. In theory it's sound, in practice it means you're going to be pushing buttons to wake the thing back up again before you've finished reading the long joke you received on a txt message. So another option that isn't really so practical.

So how can we really safe battery life? Apart from silly ideas like using it less, disabling vibration and turning it off when it's not in use.

Let's go back to 3G...

Continue Reading "Mobile Phones" »

So another week goes by since I washed the towels at 40 degrees Celsius. As you may remember, washing and drying the set of cotton towels in a 40 degree wash used 2.67kWh of electricity.

How will it compare if we raise the temperature to 50 degrees? Clearly we'll need to raise the water temperature by another 10 degrees so it's going to use more power, but how much?

Continue Reading "Zanussi Jetsystem Washer/Dryer - 50 degrees" »

The Zanussi Jetsystem 1600 XC6 is a domestic washer dryer unit, the specific model being tested is the wjd1667w. Amongst other things, this means it is white and the XC stands for eXtra Capacity...meaning it has a larger drum than a 'standard model' allowing you to wash more clothes in a single load.



We disconnected the unit from the mains supply and between the plug and the supply socket we inserted our electricity meter device. We then switched on the mains supply again making the unit live.

On the front of the display is a large yellow ON/OFF button. Pushing the button in turns the unit on, pushing again turns it off and all the lights go out. But is it really off? Our meter says it isn't.

Continue Reading "Zanussi Jetsystem 1600 XC6 Washer Dryer" »