Electronic Vampires Sucking the Money Out of Your Wallet

Did you know most of the electronic devices in your home, and office, continue to consume electricity even when you think you've turned them off?

Thursday, March 19th 2009, 7:34 pm

By: News 9


Did you know most of the electronic devices in your home, and office, continue to consume electricity even when you think you've turned them off? TVs, computers, VCRs and stereos go into a standby state.

That's how they are able to turn on when you use a remote control or press a "soft touch" button. The U.S. Department of Energy states that 75 percent of the electricity used to power home electronics is consumed while the products are turned off. Then there are things like rechargeable toothbrushes and hand-held vacuum cleaners that are always charging when not in use. Not only are they sucking power but it isn't good for the battery life to always be on-charge.

And some of the worst offenders are these AC adaptors. These things use power just leaving them plugged into the wall. Don't believe me? Go ahead and touch one that's been plugged in and not connected to whatever it connects to. Is it warm to the touch? Then it's using electricity. Its estimated 95 percent of the power consumed by cell phone chargers is wasted energy and only 5 percent of the power these consume goes to charging the phone. So what does all this mean to you? About $4 billion is wasted on vampire power in the U.S. alone. That's roughly $100 per year for the average household. So what do you do? Unfortunately you can't realistically unplug everything in the house.

But you can unplug unused AC adaptors, you can plug your computer to a power strip, preferable a surge suppressor type, then once you shut down the computer you just turn off the power strip, which will cut all power.

Reducing energy consumption saves resources, reduces the need to build expensive new power plants and reduces your electric bill.

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