Your home is full of devices that drain vampire energy. Learn how to slay these energy vampires, to help save money and the environment.
I used to work in an office where the digital clock on the microwave was always on. Yet there was a wall clock directly above the microwave, making the clock on the microwave completely redundant. Microwaves are great energy-saving devices when used properly, but in this instance, this microwave was most definitely drawing vampire energy.
What Is Vampire Energy?
Vampire energy is quite a dramatic term for the power that appliances and electrical goods use when they are plugged in but on stand-by. Your TV that displays a red standby light when not in use? An energy vampire. The microwave that displays the time when you’re not using it? Another energy vampire.
To illustrate this further, I read somewhere once that it is estimated that a typical microwave is on for 70 hours a year. Yet a microwave draws power for more than 100 times as long, just to keep the clock and electronic controls powered. That means you are using energy and paying extra on your bills for appliances you are not even using.
One blogger found that in fact, his microwave clock was consuming 25-30% of the power of the heating element of his microwave. That’s a lot of unnecessary energy wasted.
What Devices Drain Vampire Energy?
Lots of common household appliances drain vampire energy. These include:
- TVs on standby
- Microwaves with inbuilt clocks
- Ovens with inbuilt clocks
- Mobile phone chargers (once fully charged)
- Electric toothbrush chargers (once fully charged)
- Laptops (once fully charged)
- Desktop computer monitors on standby
- Printers
- TV Boxes
- Stereos
- Video Games Consoles
How To Save Energy & Money
To defeat the energy vampires, it’s thankfully not as complex as slaying Dracula. There are less extreme ways to save energy than driving a stake through your television set.
Simply switching off the appliances at the wall when you’re not using them is enough to save a staggering amount of energy with very little effort. Unplugging rechargeable devices, such as mobile phones, laptops, and electric toothbrushes as quickly as possible once they’re fully charged is also another good way to save money and energy.
If switching the socket off at the wall isn’t an option, you can buy switched extension leads*, where every socket on the extension cable has its own individual switch.
It’s quite a staggering amount of energy that could be saved with one simple flick of the switch – they don’t come much easier than that!
Good advice. It’s amazing how things like that all add up!
This is alarmist nonsense. Many Eco people are well-meaning, but have little grasp of physics.
I heard that a TV on standby uses up to 50% of the figure when on. That figure varies with the person in the pub who tells you this. I’m a tech and so I actually did the measurement. Mine was guzzling about half a watt. Of course, zero is better than even a half, integrated over time, but it’s important to get perspective.
My own daughter ( degree standard, ho, ho ) goes potty when I leave my radio on since it wastes electricity ( which she doesn’t offer to pay for even though she earns more than I do ) and then leaves a 60W light running all day. Go figure.
However, I hadn’t considered the standby consumption of the controller. Many are microprocessors which use negligible current themselves, but there may be associated circuitry which is up to no good. Worth a look.
However, IMO, the clock uses naff-all.
Now, there is one particularly nasty feature of microwaves you might be unaware of, which swallows power by the bucket-full and about which you can do little. The transformer which powers the magnetron is too small for the job and is inefficient. The reason is that the manufacturer saves a few pence per oven by skimping on the metal. This knackers the flux and requires more power for the same result. He doesn’t mind because you pay for that, not him. Nice one. I have oft pondered if it were possible to do something about that. Answers on a post-card……