As long as they’re still plugged in, most appliances are still sucking energy out of the wall, and dollars out your wallet. GOOD magazine made another one of their pretty graphs, this time featuring a large vampire, to show how much energy and money devices continue to leech. Some people, to combat this vampiric gadget effect, have most of their devices hooked up on powerstrips so they can fully cut power to all non-essential items with just a flick of a few switches.
Vampire Energy [GOOD Magazine]
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I’m with AD8BC. Residential consumers of electricity use only 21% of all energy (in the US). Commercial, Industrial, and Transportation use the rest. What portion of that residential use is vampire power? Will curbing vampire power make any dent on our real, broader energy problems? Short answer: No.
No one show this to my grandpa. I finally convinced him to leave his damn VCR plugged in. For the last three years, he unplugged it after he used it everytime and then called me to reset it everytime he wanted to use it again.
Yes, he still has a VCR.
@ad8bc: Thanks for the astroturf, Glenn.
Would a generator bicycle solve both the cost and ALGORE guilt tied to this issue?
@armour: there is as much hazard with any rechargeable LI cells as with the burning laptops, except for LiFePO. Not only that, it’s the charge cycle where they’re most dangerous. Oh, then there’s the bit where the battery will need to be replaced.
Add on to that, you’d need to be able to run the device for a long time, and I doubt you can do that with a cheap LI battery. The device(s) in question would need to use no more than a couple hundred mA at the battery’s voltage, or lower. It’s just not feasible without a radical change in how appliances are designed.
A smart strip and UPS might do the trick, but how much added load (you know, on this Earth thing) is the creation of the UPS and replacement batteries, compared to just powering stuff at idle?
Great idea if you don’t mind clocks blinking at 12:00. It’s not just
microwaves and VCRs now. Even my TV asks me what time it is when I plug
it in.
This is quite a horrible problem and no one is bringing any attention to it. That’s why I and a team of high school students are trying to spread awareness about vampire electronics. We’ve created a blog, http://www.vampireelectronics.wordress.com, where you can find out more about this horrible issue. If you have any questions or comments, you can ask on our website or email us at vampireelectronics@yahoo.com. Thanks and hope to see your responses.