We have a newer TV that we bought earlier this year. It is a 58" Samsung LED. The TV has built in apps and wifi and we can watch Netflix, Youtube and Amazon Prime among other things direct through the TV. Its a neat feature that we use quite a bit. However when you turn on the TV it takes a while to initialize the apps and you have to wait a while. When you first power up it takes a couple seconds for the TV to come on. Then you hit the smart hub button and select the app you want. Then it will initially give a message that its "Preparing the TV... please try again later." with an OK button and no other choice. The TV is probably setting up its internal computer and connecting to the network. It takes about a minute for the TV to turn on and then get to the point that you can load the apps.
The TV uses about 60W of electricity. If I leave the TV on for 1 hour then it uses 60 Wh. Thats 0.06 kWh. A kWh costs me about 11c. So leaving the TV on for 1 hour costs about 0.66c of electricity. Leaving the TV on 3 hours is roughly 2c. If I left it on all day long it would be roughly 10c.
If equate my time to be worth the national minimum wage of $7.25 per hour then 1 minute of my time is worth 12c.
Because turning the TV off takes 1 minute that is worth about 12c. Therefore...
Leaving my TV on all day is worth it to save the 1 minute of my time.
Now I cant exactly magically take 1 minute of my time and turn it into money. But I do value my free time more than minimum wage. If I could pay money to do away with all the wasted time in my week and it added up to 2 hours then I'd happily spend 1 hour of that time in a money making endeavor in order to pay the money and end up with 1 extra free hour. I don't think I'll leave my TV on all day because I don't like wasting electricity. But if I know I'm going to be using the TV off and on over a day I may leave it on a few hours to save waiting 1 minute multiple times after it powers up each time.
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April 26, 2016
Its Worth It To Leave My TV On All Day Long
Labels:
anti-frugal,
frugal