It’s an evil spirit that you can’t fight with garlic or a silver cross.
Depending on the language you use, it translates differently. In Japanese it is “waiting appliance electricity.” In French it is “electricity used while an appliance is sleeping at its post.”
In plain English, “it” is vampire power and “it” is costing you a sizable chunk of change for its standby prowess.
It was first termed “leaking electricity” since it continuously draws power from your outlet without providing any useful service. In other words, the kind of power you don’t even know you’re using, but are still paying for.
Any appliance with an external power supply (a plug-in adapter/power brick, usually black), a remote control, memory settings, or a clock display requires standby electricity. If the equipment feels warm even when it has been switched off for a while, it is a power vampire.
If one million households halved their phantom power load, we’d eliminate about 136,100,000 kilograms of CO2 per year.
The average Canadian household has 25 or more of these products that use standby power and account for between five and 20 per cent of annual electricity consumption. Natural Resources Canada blames vampire power from appliances for the four per cent increase in residential energy use over the last decade.
Got a computer, TV, VCR, DVD player or recorder, stereo system, microwave oven, fax or answering machine, battery charger, printer or night-light? How about a cordless phone, cell phone, digital camera, power tool or other electronic device with an adapter? Across Canada, these appliances in standby mode are estimated to be using at least 5.4 terawatt-hours – that’s 5,400,000,000 kWh, equivalent to the electrical consumption of more than 500,000 households.
When not in use these appliances operate on standby power, even when they are turned off. While a typical 25-inch television uses 4.5 watts when on standby – compared with 90 when in operation – the standby consumption exceeds the operating usage if the TV is watched only one hour per day.
VCRs are worse, using on average only five per cent of their total energy for their intended functions of recording and playing videos. Overall, the average household’s TVs and VCRs use only 60 per cent of their electrical consumption for their intended purposes.
An even greater fiend is the set-top box – typically a cable box, video game box or satellite decoder or digital converter. These use almost as much energy off as on. In one year, the average satellite decoder consumes 130 kilowatts of power, about one-third of what an energy-efficient refrigerator uses.
So what are your estimated annual phantom power figures? Each watt of vampire power costs one dollar per year. If you have 25 power vampires consuming an average of seven watts each, they will cost you $175 per year and emit about 900 kilograms of carbon dioxide.
The simplest way to get rid of these power suckers is to unplug them when not in use.
A $5 power bar is even more convenient. My family has plugged our TV, VCR, DVD player and stereo system into the same power bar. At night when we’re finished watching TV, the power bar is turned off – and so are all the appliances. We also turn the power bar off during the day when we’re not at home.
The phantom electrical load in the industrialized countries alone accounts for 68 million kilograms of emitted CO2 and billions of dollars wasted per year. The International Energy Agency estimates that standby power produces 1 per cent of the world’s CO2 emissions. Putting that figure into context, total air travel contributes less than 3 per cent to global CO2 emissions.
Canada’s federal government launched the Standby Power Advisory Committee this June to find ways to reduce standby power consumption. The first regulation for standby power will be put in place in 2008 and an even more stringent standard will follow in 2010.
In the meantime, if all Canadians unplugged our standby power products or used power bars, we’d save the electricity used by all the homes in Manitoba and Prince Edward Island combined and save money.
Now that’s the way to exorcise a demon.
RESOURCES – Natural Resources Canada has a backgrounder on Canada’s action on standby power.
EcoAction has a Q & A about standby power.