Seeing that Eskom’s tariffs will be increasing by about 25% annually over the next three years, we all could do with some assistance in lowering our power usage. Radiant Lighting and Electrical has brought out its Trickleswitch and Tricklesaver products, which saves money by lowering the amount of power that appliances connected to your TV and PC use on a daily basis.
 
For TV
The Tricklesaver ES200 for the television will automatically switch off all devices that are plugged in to your TV, including your DVD or home entertainment speakers, the moment you switch off your TV. Usually these peripheral appliances would remain on standby, which wastes energy and noticeably adds to your electricity bill each month. In fact studies have indicated that between 5-10% of power usage in the average home is attributable to devices that are on standby.

Easy set-up
The set-up process is quite simple, all you have to do is to plug in the Tricklesaver ES200 and connect your TV to the master adaptor and other peripheral devices such as your DVD player and 5.1 surround sound system to the slave adaptor. (Your DSTV should also be connected to the master adaptor since it saves DSTV from the reboot and scanning process when restarting.) When you switch off your TV, the other peripheral devices will do the same, switching on again the moment you turn your TV on. Although Radiant claims that you could use the remote to switch your TV off, whereby the ES200 will turn off all peripheral devices, it didn't work for us and we actually had to turn the TV off by pressing its power button in order for the peripheral devices to turn off. Correction: It does definitely work. You have to play around with the unit's sensitivity settings by adjusting the dial on the side of the Tricklesaver in order for it to detect the wattage drawn from the master unit on standby. It's a bit tough to do this by hand, so a screwdriver will do.  The dail's range falls between 0-10, with six working for us.
 
You can get the Tricklesaver ES200 for R682 and there's also the Trickleswitch ES150 and Tricklesaver ES100 that does the same job with your PC's peripheral appliances, such as the printer and external modem etc. For further information, you can contact Radiant on 011-386-0000 or visit www.thetricklestar.co.za.