Energy vampires

There was an article in our paper recently speaking of "energy vampires" which is what it called all those little sources of energy leakage that we usually never think about. That would include the instant-on television (how many of us can remember when it took several minutes for a TV or even a radio to "warm up"). Also included are the many chargers, transformers, docking stations, etc. that we have to have for all our hand-held equipment. The article in the paper was taken almost wholesale from the California Energy Commission's Consumer Energy Center in case you want to look closer.

Apparently, while large appliances have been making great strides and actually using 1/3 as much energy as they did 20 years ago, small appliances and the "energy vampires" are picking up the slack. While standards have been set to encourage reduction of energy usage in large appliances, no such standards exist for many small appliances. For some computer and audio-visual related equipment there is the Energy Star rating which can sometimes mean as much as a 75% savings over non-rated equipment.

Unfortunately, after talking about the cost of energy vampires, the article never does tell us how much we're actually leaking. There is a nice table of how much eneregy is used by appliances while they're ON, there isn't a corresponding table for the cost of the same appliances while they're OFF. They simply recommend that users unplug such appliances when not in use or use an power bar that allows you to really turn off the appliances.