Time controlled plugs | Eco Tip #1

Hello everyone.

In today's video I wanted to share a green tip forward reducing your electricity usage.

I have recently switched energy suppliers here in the UK to one that uses 100% renewable energy so while I can keep the lights on all day without fear that I am polluting the world, that's not really the point.

So I was looking around for other things I could do to save money and help the environment. I'm sure like most of you I already switch off the television of the wall, the lights off when I don't need it and have adjusted my thermostat.

Then I remembered I have a stash of these in my house. These are timed switches and as you can see the technology has been around for while. Now the cool thing about these is that in no time at all you can set up when you want your plugs to switch on and switch off. So I'm going to show you too practical uses of these plugs around your home.

Let's start over by my TV.

Like the majority of the people in the country I have broadband Internet and I also use an external hard drive to store my media files and the backing up purposes. However I frequently forget to switch them off at night so I'm going to use a timed plug to do the job for me. Now, before I set this up I just wanna say one thing. When doing this is important to realise when your clock will switch off just so you're not using the Internet for anything important or backing up to your external hard drive as this could create some problems.

Now with this particular plug all I have to do is flick up the hours which I want power to go to my devices, turn the dial to the correct time and plug it in. now I can have Internet and access to my files all day and not have to worry about switching things off when I go to bed.

Speaking of going to bed, that's another area which has troubled me. Most of us now use smartphones and other become more and more ubiquitous they're getting more and more energy efficient with longer battery lives and shorter charge cycles. However, what the most of us do when we go to bed at night? That's right, we just plug them in and let them charge for that 7 to 8 hours overnight. My phone in particular only requires about 1 to 2 hours to charge so this is where I'm going to use another time plug to save more money.

So what I'm going to do is set this timer to 11 o'clock. That's the Time I go to bed and I'm now going to set it to come on the two hours between four and six in the morning. One thing to mention when doing this. First, make sure your phone is on aeroplane mode or silent so if it switches itself off during the night when your plug comes on and it starts to charge it, you may be alerted to all those emails or text messages you may have got during the night.

So I set the time on the plug, I set the time for the power to come on. Now all I need to do is just plug it in and make sure it switched off. That way when I go to bed what I need to do is check that the time is 11 o'clock flip the switch, and then plugged my phone then. Then I can sleep easy knowing that my phone is only getting the two hours of charge time and actually needs rather than training all about power throughout the night.

So I hope these videos have helped you. I'll be making some more tip videos in the future but in the meantime I'll gloppy hear your suggestions in the comment section. Be sure to check out my website (www.optical-minefield.co.uk) and also follow me on twitter where I am @AdamRoxby.

I'll speak to you again really soon.



Music - 'Could be' by Alex (http://ccmixter.org/files/AlexBeroza/39131)

Видео Time controlled plugs | Eco Tip #1 канала Adam Roxby