Vampire power

By cody rudy

• Did you know that There's a vampire on the loose and he’s sucking the content out of your walls Whether you're at work, at home or out on the town, this vampire is sucking the

content out of your walls and harming the environment a bit too. But, there's no need to barricade the house and stock up on garlic just yet. This vampire works entirely though your electrical outlets and slaying this monster can be as easy as pulling a few plugs.

The villain in question is vampire power, also known as standby power .

You can also find it referred to as

• vampire energy• leaking energy• wall waste. • phantom load• leaking electricity• Wall watts• Standby power

• The term refers to the electricity many electronic and appliances waste just by being plugged in to the wall (even if they're switched off). After all, what do you think your cell-phone charger does all day while it's plugged into the wall? it's been using electricity – even though it’s had nothing to charge all day.

• Individually, your battery chargers may not put that much strain on the local power plant, but the big picture is far more troubling.

• In The United States alone, vampire power costs consumers more than $3 billion a year.

• Over time, many microwaves and televisions actually consume more electricity during the hours they're not in use than the times you're actually using them to heat up dinner and watch your favorite show.

• In the average U.S. home, 25 percent of electricity use in home occurs while the products are off

• Vampire power usually include the following:• One a gadget, such as a cell-phone AC adapter, constantly

supplies a charge, even if the batteries are fully charged or if nothing is plugged into it. Many AC adapters, nicknamed wall waste by some critics, waste as much as 50 percent of the power they use.

• The gadget uses electricity to power a display screen, an external time display. In some cases, this power usage is justified. For instance, your refrigerator needs to monitor temperature levels in order to power up and down at appropriate times. But When it comes to your radio however, it's not as easy to justify a constant power drain.

• Three the gadget never fully shuts down so that it's ready to use at a moment's notice. Many printers spend hours in standby mode, waiting to receive signals from connected computers.

• Before you even think about pick up your remote control, the TV is already using electricity to power the sensor that will receive the signal.

• Vampire power has been on the rise during the past decade, thanks to the proliferation of rechargeable gadgets, computer networks and devices with standby power functions.

• The United States consumes 26 percent of the world's energy. Of that energy, approximately 5 percent is vampire power.

• To put that in perspective, that's roughly as much electricity as the entire country of Italy consumes in a year.

• All this energy use enacts quite a hefty toll on the environment. Coal-burning power plants produce carbon dioxide, a leading cause of global worming. Therefore, less vampire power translates to lower carbon emissions. Even plants that run on nuclear or hydroelectric power produce emissions that can lead to smog and acid rain.

• DESKTOP COMPUTER: $6.20• LCD COMPUTER MONITOR: $1.00• COMPUTER SPEAKER SYSTEM: $5.16• INKJET PRINTER: $4.28• DVD PLAYER: $3.60• MICROWAVE OVEN: $2.48• 50in flat screen TV: $5.00• Xbox $2.18 • Wii $2.31• A month

The amount the fooling electronic wasted just by being plugged in

• How can you help control vampire power and lower my electric bill?

• If you're not using an electronic device, unplug it -- that's the blunt approach to fighting vampire power.

• You can make this step even easier with a surge protector. Plug multiple items in the strip and simply

• turn it off when you're not using the devices. If the strip is off, you don't have to worry about leaking electricity.

• Electronic devices may cause vampire power, but there are also a number of gadgets on the market designed to help cut down on unnecessary power

loss.

• An energy-saving surge protectors feature a master-slave arrangement, similar to the set up of many electronic devices. If you aren't using your computer, why have power traveling to your speakers, printer and other accessories? The smart strip lets you designate one device as the "master" and several secondary devices as "slaves". If the master device is off or drawing only standby power, then the slave outlets don't get any power either.