Hey everyone, this is Real World Green and I am Eric Rochow. Today, we are going to talk about Vampire power. Vampire power refers to the electricity being used by your electronics in your home, even while they are turned off or at least they are normally turned off because you walked over with your remote control and you went blink and you turned it off but the screen maybe dark but its still on, the electronics are still on there, waiting for you to come over and hit the red button again and turn them back, on, on again. So, Vampire power is that power being sucked up by all this stuff even while you are not there.
The department of energy estimates that in the average home, 40% of all electricity used to power home electronics is consumed while the products are turned off and if you add that all up, it equals the annual output of 17 power plants. So the basic rule of thumb here is, if it has a remote control even when its off, its more than likely on. Computers are notorious users of Vampire power. When you pick Shut Down from the menu, the screen goes blank, you hear a little cu-clunk noise, maybe but the computer isn't really off, the computer itself, your monitors, your speakers, your scanner, your printer, anything else that you have plugged in, its all still on. Why? Because the little power supplies are plugged into the wall and there is still humming away.
So, for about, $20, you can eliminate this Vampire power that's sucking all this power while your computer is turned off. Its very, very simple, see this thing called the Power Strip. All you do, is you plug in all your peripherals and your computer, all the power supplies, any plug that runs anything associated with your computer, you put it into your Power Strip and then when you shut down your computer, you shut off the strip.
This is a Kill A Watt Meter, you can buy these online, what they do, is they show you the amount of energy being used by your different electronic appliances in the house. You plug this into the wall, you plug your appliance into here and right up here, it shows you how many watts that thing is using when its on and when its off. We are on the flight path to LaGuardia, so we get a lot of that.
One of the journalist of the New York Times, used a Kill A Watt Meter and plugged it into his computer and he determined that over the course of a year, his computer and all its components was contributing 2000 pounds of CO2 into the air annually. Did you ever notice that the cell phone charger is always kind of warm? That's because it's plugged in to the wall. According to the Future fores, only five percent of the power used by cell phone chargers is actually used to charge your phone. The other 95% is drained off because you have this plugged into the wall, but it's not plugged into the phone. So when you are not charging your phone, unplug your cell phone from the well. Better yet, instead of using a cell phone charger that plugs into the wall, get a solar powered one. Put it out in the window, charge up your phone. You are really green.
Okay, so thats all about Vampire power. If you are going to buy new appliances, look for appliances that have an energy star label, they pull a lot less power that regular appliances. Keep your bill down and keep your CO2 emissions down. The best thing of course, is to make sure, its all turned off. Thats Real World Green. Visit our website, tell your friends about the show, leave us some comments and tell us what you think. Thanks.
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