Vampires of the Green World

October 30th, 2007 Alex

If you have not heard of what vampire electronics are, they are the electronic equipments such as cell phone chargers that plug into the outlet with its fangs and drain energy while it is plugged in and unused. It is also referred to as “Phantom Energy”. Last year, California passed the Vampire Slayers Act proposal to add the vampire electronics label to consumer products showing how much energy gets used when left plugged in. I haven’t seen or heard anything more about this act so it doesn’t seem like it has done anything. I doubt that companies would want to spend the extra money making a label that would do nothing for their profits and I honestly don’t know if the labels would make a difference for consumers.

What I still don’t really understand is, whether pushing the off button on a surge protector will cut off the electricity flowing to the surge protector. Obviously, the power to everything that is plugged into the power surge will get cut, but is there still energy that is wasted by having the power surge plugged in? The best way is to avoid having anything plugged in when it is not in use, but we all know that can be a hassle. Flipping the switch on the power surge can be a lot easier but I don’t really hear or see much of that being promoted. Also as I mentioned in an earlier post, there are a couple of power surges that claim to cut all electric currents when you flip the switch so I guess I sort of answered my own question that normal power surges still do not cut off all current to the power surge but it is probably still better than having the electricity currents flow to everything that is plugged into the power surge.

 According to this article, having electronics go to standby mode makes up for 5% of all the electricity that gets used in the United States. It amounts to $4 billion a year and the number will continue to increase. Putting your computer in “standby” mode is an example, but I dont think it is a bad thing that electronics go into standby mode. It is a lot better off than having the electronics actually be left on. For example, putting your computer in standby mode can save a lot of energy as a regular desktop uses about 60-250 watts when it is on. When that computer in sleep or standby mode it only uses 1-6 watts. Here is a good website on how much electricity gets used by your computers: http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/computers.html.

Entry Filed under: Green Tech