Unfortunately the LIME Energy Saving Plug is no longer freely available.
Please feel free to read all about how the product works below, and be sure to explore our other ENERGY SAVING PRODUCTS
Now times are getting tighter financially, we are all keen to save money wherever possible. Recently there has been a free energy saving device advertised by a company called LIME. The bonus is that this energy saving device has backing from the government. The device in question is an energy saving plug. It doesn’t sound very exciting but has a very useful function. It enables the user to switch their TV and other devices at the wall off standby without having to leave the sofa.
The plug
Sometimes when it’s the end of the night and you’re ready for bed, getting up to switch all the appliances off at the wall can be just too much or you might be too sleepy to remember to do it. This device lets you use your remote control to switch your plug sockets off, which in turn means you leave nothing on standby. The plug has an Infra Red receiver which has to be placed in the line of sight of your remote control. When you press the assigned button on your remote control, the socket will turn off. In fact, all power to connected equipment will be turned off. To restore the power, you just press the assigned button on the remote control again. It’s that easy.
How it works
The LIME energy saving plug operates with all conventional Infra Red remote controlled appliances such as TVs, DVD player/recorders etc. It can operate on single socket or multi socket extensions.
So for example, to set up a multi-socket extension lead with a TV and DVD player plugged into it, you can follow these simple steps:
- Plug your extension lead into the socket of the LIME energy saving plug.
- Plug the LIME energy saving plug into the wall socket.
- Switch on the mains and the energy saving plug will flash slowly.
- Point your remote control of choice at the Infra Red reader and hold down the on/off button. The light on the unit will flash quickly and will then go off. Your plug is now synchronised.
- To turn your TV and DVD player on and off, press your remote on/off button once.
The good bits
- It’s so easy! You can switch all your appliances off without leaving the comfort of your chair.
- You can save energy and cut your carbon consumption. A TV left on standby can use about 3 watts in standby [1], an average DVD player can use 1.8 watts, an average DVD recorder 6.5 watts, and an average freeview set top box can use 3.5 watts [2].
- Save on electricity bills. If your TV and associated appliances are not on standby all night and possibly all day when you’re at work, then you will be saving on your electricity bill. LIME claim that you can save up to £20 a year by using this device. The average examples above can give you can annual standby cost of over £12. Use this device and cut on your bills immediately.
- There is a maximum load of 3000 watts.
- You can use two plugs in the same room. A lot of us have lots of gadgets in one room these days including PCs, chargers, stereo equipment, speakers etc, so it is useful to be able to use more than one energy saving device in one room.
The not so good bits
- The power is still on…sort of. Although the device cuts all power to your appliances, the switch at the socket will still be on. This is unavoidable, and the power from the socket is used to keep the energy saving plug active so that it can be switched on and off. However the standby power used to power this device is less than 0.5 watts.
- You can’t plug in a Sky+ Box to this device as it needs to be left on at all times to save wear on the hard drive. Also do not plug in fridges, freezers or fish tanks for obvious reasons!
- You need to allow 60 seconds before turning off the energy saving plug after turning it on. So if you switched on the TV to check the time on the morning news for example, but wanted to switch it straight off again, you would not be able to. You could turn off the TV, but you would have to wait for 60 seconds before you could switch off the energy saving plug. Not so great if you’re in a hurry.
Where to order your free plug
If you like the sound of this energy saving plug, then you can get yours for free here until 11th March 2011.
Go ahead, do your little bit to cut your emissions and save yourself some money.
References
[1] Berners-Lee, M. (2010) How bad are bananas? The carbon footprint of everything.
[2] Which? (2011) Technology and Standby http://www.which.co.uk/environment-and-saving-energy/energy/guides/how-to-use-less-electricity/technology-and-standby
