Vampire Appliances

By Rich Eichacker
Vibrance Technology Corporation

Have you ever noticed how many lights are on in your darkened office or living room? The cell phone charger, the monitor, the speakers, the phone, the VCR, the cordless phone, the cable box, etc. These “Vampire” appliances suck electricity even when you turn them off.

Vampire appliances cost consumers and businesses up to $3.5 billion dollars per year in electricity. At 52 billion kilowatt hours per year, they consume an equivalent amount of power equal to 26 power plants! In fact, this drain may add about 10% to your electric bill.

The culprits are devices that either run in stand-by mode when turned off or use AC adapters. Stand-by devices include printers, monitors and VCRs. When shut off, these devices continue to consume power by maintaining electronics such as the clock or the circuitry waiting to receive a signal from a computer or remote control. Even in “sleep” mode, computers continue to use power, waiting for the operator to hit a key and wake them up. AC adapters are the other big culprit and most today are very inefficient. Any device that has a recharger or adapter will continue to consume power even when the target device is not plugged in. For example, when you disconnect your cell phone from the charger but leave it plugged into the wall, it continues to use power. This is true for many of the electronic devices we use today: speakers (adapter), laptops (charger), baby monitors (adapter & charger) and so on.

So take a survey of those glowing lights in your home and office. Chances are you’ll find around 20 devices in your home and double or triple that amount in your office.

Here are some suggestions to reduce the electricity being consumed by these vampires:

  • Turn off computers when not in use for long periods of time (when you leave the office or on weekends).
  • Avoid using the sleep mode on computers and instead put them into hibernation. In hibernation the computer truly shuts off.
  • Turn monitors and speakers off when not in use.
  • Turn peripherals off when not in use: printers, scanners, external drives, etc.
  • Unplug laptop and cell phone chargers from the wall when the device has finished charging.
  • Look for an Energy Star label on the product, for which EPA now includes stand-by power limits in its evaluation criteria.

Reducing the power consumed by these devices will save you money, reduce pollution by reducing the power generated by power plants, and help ease (ever so slightly) the growing demand on our electrical grid.

Winter 2006 -Volume 16, Number 1

 

 

All articles are copyrighted by the authors in the year published.