Want to know what I find scary this Halloween? Halloween night, after all the Trick-or-Treaters are gone, and after all the holiday parties have finally wound down, you finally go to bed. Before you do, you think you’ve turned off the TV, the computer, the stereo, the coffee pot, and the charger for your cell phone. Yet all night (and frankly all day), the electrical load for many of those appliances never dies. Like some sort of obyri-voltaic Vincent Price, the stand-by features on those electronics spend the night continuing to suck power, in an everlasting quest to fill their ravenous hunger.
This unquenching thirst for electricity has been called vampire power. No, “vampire power” is not some sort civil rights movement for the undead. You will not see the streets filled with pointy-toothed, black-cloaked figures demanding reasonable accommodations. Employers will not suddenly have to provide unlit, garlic-free workspaces. Vampire power is the term used for the continuous sucking of electricity by many electronics. It is caused by the stand-by features of many items. Want your coffee pot to turn on instantly when you wake up? To do so, it has to draw electricity all night to keep the stand by features ready to spring into action in the morning.
So how big of a problem is this lurking monster of vampire power? No one knows for sure, but estimates have it as high as 5-10% of total U.S. household electricity. Quite frankly, if you are a homeowner or building owner and haven’t upgraded your insulation or switched to more energy efficient lighting, those are bigger priorities. But let’s say you have already done that stuff. Or let’s say you are a student in a residence hall or a renter in an apartment who doesn’t have the ability to upgrade the insulation or building lighting. Killing your vampire power can be an important step in reducing your electrical use. After all, do you really want to pay for electricity or deal with the related greenhouse gasses for stuff that you think is off and that you’re not using?
So what are you supposed to do to stop this lurking nosferatu-watt monster? Before you spend the night holding a cross up to your television to ward off the evil vampire, before you spray your computer with holy water, and before you try to jam a wooden stake through the heart of your cell phone, there is an easier way. You need to isolate these energy vampires so that they don’t have access to their next victims. Unplugging things works, but it’s can be a pain if you have a lot of stuff. Try a power strip instead. Switching off that power strip disables the watt-sucking stand-by features of the electronics that you have plugged into it. Will all due respect to Buffy, Blade, and their ilk, you just might find that this power strip becomes your favorite vampire slayer.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Standby Power Info
U.S. Department of Energy Standby Power FAQs
Energy Star Standby Power FAQs
Roger Guzowski
