Unfortunately Ecotek products, including The Standby Saver and The Energy Wizard, are no longer available. Read on for more information on each of the products, or explore our own range of Energy Saving Products here at Energy Saving Warehouse

The Ecotek products are designed to save energy, carbon and money with minimal effort or financial outlay. The two products looked at here are Ecotek’s Standby Wizard and Energy Wizard.

“In the UK alone the running costs of standby power for TVS, VCRs, DVDs and Hi-Fis is over £572m per year and produces 3.1 million tonnes of C02 emissions!” (Ecotek)

The Standby Saver

This product looks likes any normal 6-way extension socket, except that two of the plugs have a small green switch on them. The idea behind Standby saver is that it will turn off, at the mains, all of those appliances previously left on standby. The joy of this devise is that it will turn them all off at the same time, using a learnt command from one of your existing remote controllers; stereos, TV’s, DVD players, VCR’s, games consoles etc. can all be turned off from the one controller (if they are all plugged into the same device). They also produce a USB version for turning off computers and associated peripherals; printers, modems, hard drives, etc. The USB version uses ‘intelligent technology’ to detect when your computer has powered down and will then shut down any peripherals attached to it. Both versions have two switched sockets on them for appliances such as Sky boxes and routers, which often need to be left ‘on’. You can, however, chose not to employ these as such and make use of all 6 sockets for standby savings by simply flicking the green switches. This is a nice touch as it provides a bit more flexibility. On reading the instructions, the standby saver would appear to be very easy to install and set up, which is always a plus point. There is also a compact model that has only 1 socket.

Some of you may have realised this is the same that product that appeared on the BBC programme Dragon’s Den. Apparently, it was very well received and earned the seal of approval from all five investors. I personally don’t take this as a resounding endorsement of the product, but if you also consider the awards it has won, and the fact that since February 2008, Ecotek have sold 940,000 units, I think this is a product worth paying some attention to – hence this article. On the subject of selling, I have to say that for what it is, the price seems very reasonable; the 6-way model costs around £15-£20, while the compact version costs about £15 (these prices are obviously dependant on where you buy them). The financial and carbon savings to be made will depend on how many appliances you currently leave on standby.

Now, although this seems like a very good, innovative product, I have to admit that I probably wouldn’t buy one, for three reasons:

• Almost all of my electrical appliances are turned off at the mains anyway when not in use.
• My appliances are also spread around the house, so I would have to buy multiple units.
• I’m afraid that with the ease of use of the product – being remote controlled – I will get lazy and start to leave certain appliances on until the Standby Saver does the job for me in the evening, with the push of a single button. For instance, my DVD player is only used for a few hours a week so having it come on to standby mode whenever I turn on the TV seems like a bit of waste. I also flick off the switch to my printer whenever I have finished using it, but if I rely the standby saver to do the job for me, I may be tempted to forget this, so the printer would only be turned off at the end of the day when I turn of the computer, again wasting energy. I appreciate this may sound like a minor quibble, but remember we are only talking about standby power here, so it would be very easy to negate any bonuses this product brings by leaving appliances switched on that are off most of the time. This is of course a discipline that one would have to get used to, but then again, so is switching them off at the mains.

I have listed these reasons not to criticise the product, but because I want to highlight that any savings achieved by the standby saver are wholly dependant on how your appliances are set up and how you use them. One of the Energy Saving Warehouse’s principles is to save you money, so before you part with you hard-earned cash, do take some time to really assess if you need this product. If you believe it will save you money and effort then, please, go ahead and buy one.

On the plus side, the Standby Saver may be of particular interest to small businesses, where a number of computers, monitors, etc are in use, but where it’s not really viable to go around individually checking what’s been left on. It would surely make sense if the last person out of the office had the ability to turn everything off with the push of one button. The same has to be said of parents whose children have multiple appliances in their bedrooms. When kissing the little darlings goodnight and turning off the light, it would be simple to also grab a remote control and make sure that everything in their bedroom is turned of properly. My children are too young as yet to have Playstations, computers and TVs in their rooms, but I could see me buying this product in the future for the above reason alone. I also like the idea that you can plug your lights into one of these and, hey presto, you have remote controlled lights. Finally, I know that many people leave their appliances in standby mode because it also makes them easy to turn on with the push of a button; they would definitely benefit from one of these.

Awards, recognition and certification for the Standby Saver

• The product carries the British Gas ‘Energy for Tomorrow’ badgemark.
• In 2008 the Dispatches programme “The truth behind your energy bill” featured the Standby Saver, explaining how it could reduce standby wastage and save money.
• At the Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire Chamber Business Awards 2010, Ecotek UK won the ‘Most Promising New Business’ award.
• The Standby Saver is ccertified to British Standards: EN60950-1: 2001, IEC60950-1: 1st Edition 2001, EN60950-1: 2006, IEC60950-1: 2nd Edition 2005, EN60065: 2002+A1: 2006, IEC60065: 2001+Amd 1:2005, EN61000-6-1: 2001, EN61000-6-3: 2001, EN55014-1: 2006, EN55014-2: 1997 and EN61058.

Customer reviews

I have to say that the Standby Saver appears to be have been met with mixed feelings. There are many reviewers that are happy with their product, but poor build quality and user friendliness do frequently crop up. Hopefully Ecotek will address both of these issues.

The Energy Wizard

This little gismo is even smaller and easy to use than the standby saver. It’s simply a plug that goes into any unused socket in the house and will, allegedly, reduce your electricity consumption by up to 10% – guaranteed. It costs around £20- £30, again depending on where you buy it from. I’m not going to try and explain how it works; I’ll leave that up to Ecotek:

Electricity is supplied to your home in the form of alternating current and voltage. This means that the voltage and current rise and fall continuously, many times each second. Electricity is used most efficiently when the voltage and current rise and fall together, with their peaks occurring at the same moments in time.

In a household environment some appliances will cause a difference between the times at which the voltage and current peaks occur. If this difference is significant it will reduce the efficiency of energy usage for those appliances. You can improve this situation by using an Energy Wizard. The device works by helping to reduce these time differences, which in turn reduces inefficiency and losses, making your appliances work more efficiently.

The amount of improvement will depend on the appliances and their inefficiencies, and will therefore vary from household to household. Energy Wizard will not save energy for every household appliance, but can make reductions for some of them. Although only a part of your overall energy bill, these reductions can lead to a worthwhile annual saving. (Ecotek)

Independent testing was carried out on the Energy Wizard by ECMG laboratories, who tested the product using 10 typical household appliances. They were tested to see what difference the Energy Wizard would make when all were operated, with and without the device, over a fixed amount of time. The results showed that a saving of 12.6% was achieved with the Energy Wizard in place. Ecotek also add that their own testing shows up to a 23% improvement on the energy usage for some individual appliances – but they don’t say which appliances. Do take note of these figures though; if you are costing the payback time for your Energy Wizard, the real total saving is up to 10% off your electricity bill, not your whole energy bill. Still, if you take my household electricity bill of approximately £300, which is pretty average (3 bedrooms, 2 adults, 2 kids), then 10% is still a saving of £30 per year which means that the payback time for this product is about 8-9 months. Not bad.

Customer reviews

There are very few reviews of this product available, in fact the only customer review I found said that the product arrived with a broken prong (that build quality issue raising its ugly head again). I did find a forum with numerous posts, but it seemed to be a bit of a witch-hunt for the poor old Energy Wizard. I didn’t see anything to tell me how qualified each of the contributors are with regard to domestic energy consumption or electronics, plus the negative comments would appear to continue after one person posted that they had taken a similar device apart and stated that there is no way this device could work – not very objective writing if you ask me. It has also been noted that the Energy Wizard appears to consume around 100W when plugged in, but if you look at the FAQs on Ecotek’s website they do explain this little phenomenon quite convincingly.

In summary then…

Both of the products I’ve looked at here are OK. I am slightly put off by the lack of resounding positive reviews, but having said that, if you feel that either of them will really be of use to you, then I would recommend you go and buy one. I think I’m going to buy an Energy Wizard, but I will wait a year to see if it really works by comparing my annual electricity bills. Also friends, remember that you can cut a proportion off your energy bill by simply being mindful about what appliances are left on standby and by using them to maximum efficiency.

References

Ecotek. www.ecotek-ltd.co.uk. Online. Accessed 12/0710