Vampire Electronics Take a Bite Out of Your Household Electricity

Draining energy from your house even when they are not being used, vampire electronics drain your wallet as well as electricity with their insidious activities.

We are all so attached to all our electronics--TV's, DVR's, computers, cell phones, iPods and iPads, video games, to name a few--it seems something electronic is always on or being charged. How much we use our favorite devices is a conscious choice. What is not a conscious choice is the drain that occurs on household energy even when these "vampire" items are turned off or are plugged in but not being used.

Look around your house--are there phone, iPod, and other chargers plugged into an outlet but not into the device? They are draining electricity. Is your computer in sleep mode or on with a screensaver? More drain. Is the video game console still turned on even though no one is playing? Even more energy lost. You may have heard or read recently about the particularly leeching effect of TV set-top boxes, such as DVRs, cable and satellite boxes, which drain as much or more energy when not in use as when recording or playing, and often consume more energy than your TV.

According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, you could save more than $100 annually on your electric bill and a half a ton of heat-trapping pollutants by unplugging or completely turning off electronics. However, for many types of electronics, there are no "on/off" switches, so turning them off requires manually unplugging each one. In my house, that would take a while.

As with many green fixes, a little planning and a little time are enough to have a big impact. So for chargers, lights, appliances with digital read-outs (yes, they, too, use energy when plugged in but not in use), and those energy-intensive video game consoles, purchase a few inexpensive power strips. If you strategically place them in your house, you should be able to plug several items into each strip. Once electronics are plugged into a power strip, you will be able to turn off several devices with one flick of the power strip on/off switch.

For computers, activate system standby or hibernate features. Interestingly, screen savers generally do not save energy; in fact, some graphics-intensive screen savers can use more energy than not using them at all.

For a fun and informative experiment, borrow a Kill-a-Watt power meter from the Summit Free Public Library. It measures power consumption in Kilowatt-hours of household appliances, and also projects the cost of continued use. You'll be able to figure out where the worst vampires live in your house.

So this Halloween, take a bite out of those vampires in your own home. No wooden stake or silver bullet needed.

By Beth Lovejoy, for the Summit Environmental Commission