According to the US Dept. of Energy vampire power consumption in the USA is responsible for 5% of the total energy used and $3 billion in actual dollars wasted. This vampire power usage comes from TVs, surround sound systems, stereo, alarm-clocks, microwaves, wi-fi networks, computers, anything with a digital clock and the whole myriad of electrical items filling people’s homes and offices.
A good way to check how much energy your home is wasting is to turn off your electrical heaters and hot water heater, then check your electrical meter and see how quickly it is still churning through power. Try turning off some of those other appliances – like the coffee maker you only use in the morning, or the computer modem and wi-fi at night or during the day when you aren’t at home – you might be surprised by how much you will save on your bill and in terms of greenhouse gases. Remember that every kilowatt hour of electricity used means anywhere from 0.1kg to 0.8kg (0.22 to 1.76lbs) of CO2 are emitted by the local power station. In the USA, every kilowatt hour of electricity takes a pound of coal to produce.
If your computer monitor, coffee maker or any other appliance uses 20watts of power in stand-by and sits for 20 hours a day idling by itself, then you just put 17kgs (38lbs) of CO2 in the atmosphere over a year for per item idling.
Hopefully the economic downturn will put a dent in the sale of electrical appliances, especially energy hogs like large size plasma and LCD TVs, which are often switched on as ‘background noise’. The big plasma TVs use around 300watts (LCDs and rear-projection screens around 200watts) and the kids playstations and X-boxes add in another 200watts, not to mention the sound system, DVD player and satellite box (perhaps another 300watts). Your home entertainment is using 1 kilowatt per hour which means, assuming televisions are in use for 4 hours a day and 6.5 on a weekend, that 2500 hours per year just dumped 0.78 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. Another 0.64 tons of CO2 gets emitted when all these play-things are in standby mode…so why not switch them off completely until you really need them.
It seems there aren’t many laws in place in North America to limit the vampire power usage which actually adds up to almost the same power consumption as when you are using your electronics. Maybe it is time for North America to follow the lead the European Union (EU) has taken with electronics.
The European Union (EU) have policies in place, such as the Eco-design Directive for Energy Using Products, which ensures the electrical appliance manufacturers have to limit the actual stand-by power consumption of their hardware. Quoting an International Energy Agency (IEA) report from 2003, “Electrical appliances are the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions after cars in the 30 OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries. Residential electrical appliances account for 30% of electricity consumption and 12% of greenhouse gas emissions. Based on exist¬ing appliances policy, demand is projected to grow 13% by 2010 and 25% by 2025. (IEA, 2003). They think their policies, which are meant to limit a few watts only, could save over 200 million ton of CO2 a year (equivalent to the annual emissions of Holland).
In addition, in December 2008 the EU decided that incandescent bulbs would be phased out between 2009-12, saving almost 5 gigawatts of power, enough to power 11 million European homes and save 15 million ton of CO2 emissions. This means that Australia, Canada, the US and the EU have done the right thing with respect to light-bulbs. How about doing the right thing when it comes to banning electronic vampires from the home?
Resources
US Government Energy: http://www.energy.gov
EEC Eco-design Directive: http://www.eceee.org/european_directives/Eco_design/
International Energy Agency: http://www.iea.org/
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development: http://www.oecd.org
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