ENERGY consumers in Wiltshire are wasting up to £1.2 million each year. Customers regularly forget to turn off home entertainment systems according to research released this week.

People in the county are using up to 17 million units of energy just by leaving their TVs and videos on standby, digital set-top boxes are never switched off and lights are burning unnecessarily.

Bob Harrison from ITS Research who carried out the research said: "Each year the equivalent of two power station's worth of electricity is wasted to keep appliances on standby, and lights on in empty rooms."

"In fact around eight per cent of domestic energy goes on these things. I want to see smart panels fitted on TVs so that people know where their money is going."

Southern Electric's energy efficiency manager, Stephen Millward, said: "We want our customers' bills to be as low as possible and a simple way to keep costs down is to switch off rather than using standby."

"Electricity is very cheap nowadays, so people aren't so concerned about using power unnecessarily, but it is still important for environmental reasons to use power as efficiently as possible."