Little Vampires
There are vampires in your home right now, stealing your power. Find out how to exorcise them!
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Little Vampires
Hi there, and welcome to the Make-It-Green Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for an Earth-Friendly Life.
For those of you patiently waiting for the next Fiat Lux episode about CFLs, never fear! Make-it-Green Girl is getting her facts straight, so we’ll take a little detour. Today’s topic is energy vampires. Dun dun duh!
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Our busy lives are filled with electricity, and not just in the metaphorical sense. Americans are working harder than ever, and becoming ever more reliant on technology for communications, relaxation, and even vacations. But have you ever stopped to think about how that all works? You don’t have to, of course. The only time you are without electricity is during a really bad storm, or if you forget to pay your power bills. Our usage of electricity, however, is starting to spiral out of control. Our techno-linked lives are filling daily with more and more electron hogs, and we’re building more power plants to feed our greedy little phones and iPods and computers and light bulbs.
Identifying Phantom Power Leaks
No, I’m not saying we need to end our slavish devotion to our iPhones. But, if you look closely at it sitting there on your desk, you’ll spot a vampire draining away your energy. I’m talking about your iPhone charger hiding there in the shadows. It’s sitting there empty on your desk, waiting for it’s purpose in life to be fulfilled, inactive, doing nothing, right? Don’t be fooled by that act! The seemingly devoted charger is as we speak stealing from you! Stealing your power right from the wall, turning it into nothing useful, sucking from the electron river just as if your iPhone were right there in the cradle. This is called the “standby power” or “phantom load,” and it’s just as devious as any poltergeist. All our little electronic gadgets, gizmos, friends, companions, and entertainers carry a little extra baggage with them when they’re plugged in. Even your coffee pot, with its little blinking clock. Your stereo with it’s misleading red “off” light. Your TV, its circuits patiently listening for the call of the remote. Your phone charger’s DC power converter, drinking up your power while you’re not looking. Even while you are looking!
Eliminate Phantom Power Leaks
You can fight these vampires, but it will take more than a good garlic pasta with holy water on the side. It takes a complete restructuring of the electrons in your house. Learn to unplug the whole charger when your phone isn’t charging. Unplug your appliances when you’re not using them (except your fridge, of course). Plug your electronics into a power strip with an on/off switch, and turn it off when you’re done using them. You can even find power strips and adapters that will switch off the flow of electricity when it senses a device has gone into standby mode. The key is to find anything in the house that might be drawing power when you think it’s not. Lights, clocks, and displays need power, and are usually always on when the machine is plugged in. The cords to your computers, phones, iPods, and other electronics have converters that convert the Alternating Current in the wall to the Direct Current the device needs; these draw power across their circuits… all the time. Your TV has to power the sensor that waits for the signal from the remote… all the time. Your coffee pot, microwave oven, conventional oven, and digital toaster use power to tell you the time… all the time.
Save Money and Power
This exorcism will of course take time to get used to, but we can all learn to recover from the load these little vampires have been forcing us to carry. Happily, with electricity, this means we’ll be saving money, too! According to studies done at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory near my alma mater, as much as 75% of the power a device uses is during its standby mode. (standby.lbl.gov) With fuel prices rising all over the world, making the most of the electricity we do get sounds like a bright idea. But, our lifestyle has evolved to suit the needs of pretentious, sneaky little vampires that suck us dry. We feed these vampires so diligently, so faithfully, it’s hard to imagine that they don’t give us a cent in return. But now that you know where to look for them, you can vanquish them easily. Look around with your new green-colored glasses and you’ll spot them. Have a vampire vanquishing party with the whole household. However you do it, go home and Make-it-Green!
You can find a transcript of this show at QuickAndDirtyTips.com. Send your questions and comments to greengirl@quickanddirtytips.comcreate new email or leave a voicemail at 206-600-3051. That’s all for now, folks!