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Greenise Starts Slaying Vampires and here’s how to hunt down the watt-suckers in your home.

After spending time In Mobile AL over the weekend, I had the chance to do some research and reading and found a great article on “Slaying Energy Vampires”.

In most American households, 8% to 9% of energy dollars are spent powering devices that are turned off. Even after you shut down everything and leave the house, many appliances and gadgets continue to draw power.

These so-called energy vampires (aka phantom loads or wall warts) can be quite inconspicuous. But if a device can be switched on by remote control, features a continuous display (like the small red LED light on your TV or the clock on your DVD player), or has a transformer at the plug (the cumbersome box that makes it hard to use the other outlet), you can bet the appliance is drawing power even when you’re not using it.

Even though most electronics draw only a few watts, they add up fast. Conservative estimates show that American homes consume 440 kilowatt hours (kWh) of standby power every year. At an average of 10.4cents per kWh, that amounts to about $45 annually. Altogether, U.S. households spend about $3 billion a year buying unnecessary electricity.

Alan Meier at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory cites even higher numbers. “In California, the average home has greater than 40 devices drawing power even when they’re turned off,” say Meier, whose estimate amounts to just over 1000kwh per household, per year. at 10.4cents per kWh, that’s $104 a year.

To make matters worse, the number of appliances that consume standby power is increasing rapidly. By 2030 standby power is estimated to reach 30% of residential electrical consumption in the United States. The solutions to this problem are mostly in the hands of electronics manufacturers, but you can reduce your own standby power consumption with two simple steps: First, pinpoint unnecessary power consumption, and then find the best way to kill power to the offending appliances when they’re not being used.

STEP 1: FIND THE PHANTOM LOADS

There are a few ways to gauge how much standby power your home consumes. The simplest is to turn off everything in the house and observe the electric meter. If you use this approach, don’t forget to unplug the appliances like your refrigerator that draw constant power and to compensate for appliances that you might not be able to turn off completely, such as a hardwired dishwasher.

A more accurate approach is to use an energy monitor such as a Kill a Watt (www.p3international.com) or Watts Up? meter (www.wattsupmeters.com) to determine the energy use.

Just plug a household appliance into the meter and plug the meter into a wall socket. The meter tells you how much power is being consumed not only when the appliance is on, but also when it is switched off. Once you know which devices draw the most standby power, you can prioritize the list of equipment that you will tackle in Step 2.

Below is a table of common electronic equipment and the average energy used in each mode and per year (in order from most energy-intensive to least)

Source: ECOS Consulting, 2006: Final Field Research Report for the California Energy Commission

STEP 2: CURE THE WALL WARTS

The most obvious way to reduce unnecessary electrical consumption is to unplug appliances that draw standby power. This solution is fine for devices that are seldom used—the television in a guest room, for example—but unplugging electronics day in and day out is neither convenient nor particularly good for the plug, instead, consider using a switched power strips that allow you to plug various electronics into one strip and easily cut power to an entire cluster of equipment.

This approach is an especially idea for home-office equipment, some of the worst offenders of standby-power use. Keep in mind that you’ll be more likely to switch of the strip if you locate it in a convenient spot. So-called “smart” power strips from Watt Stopper (wattstopper.com) and Bits Limited (www.bitsltd.net) offer features that detect and cut power to unused electronics as well as surge protection to keep them safe.

You could also install switched outlets that let you turn off power to specific outlets. If you use your computer throughout the day, make sure that both the computer and the monitor have their energy-saving settings turned on. You can also adjust the length of inactivity time before the computer converts to “hibernate” or “sleep” mode; the shorter the time, the less power you’ll use. Keep in mind, screen savers do not reduce the energy load on your computer, and a hibernating computer still uses considerably more power than one in standby mode or one whose power has been killed altogether.

It’s worth noting that unplugging most household appliances causes no trouble at all, but some devices, such as digital-cable boxes, have to reboot or be reprogrammed after power is cut. You probably don’t want to shut off their power strip or unplug them every day, but it’s a good idea to do so if you’ll be away from home for a while.

Article from: Fine Home Building’s – Green@Home, By Matthew Teague.