Are you ready to slay Energy Vampires this Halloween?

Photo By Petty Officer 1st Class Jacob Sippel | Energy Action Month is each October to raise awareness of the critical role energy resilience plays in mission readiness and to drive behavior change.  

CAMP LEMONNIER, DJIBOUTI

10.26.2021

Courtesy Story

Camp Lemonnier, Djibouti

CAMP LEMONNIER, Djibouti – Halloween is just around the corner and as trick-or-treaters are roaming the streets in search of screams and sweets, a hidden terror could already be lurking around the corner. We’re talking about energy vampires that suck electrical power from our appliances even when you aren’t using them, which in turn takes a big bite out of our budget.

In 2015, the National Resources Defense Council stated that Americans are spending around $19 billion per year in energy costs from vampire appliances and electronics. Practically speaking, that’s around 10-15% of the total energy consumption in offices or households for no reason. This annual energy consumption is equivalent to the output of fifty large power plants. According to the EPA, The U.S. could power eleven million homes with this wasted energy alone.

Energy vampire, also called standby power and phantom power, refers to the energy consumed by our everyday appliances and electronic devices when they are in standby mode. The most common example is TV as it absolutely drains power even after you press “OFF” button on your remote.
Every cord that remains plugged into an outlet is pulling electricity out.

Let me introduce to you a few examples of daily used vampire electronics that leech the power while you have them switched off.

Cell phone charger: you may wonder why the cell phone AC adapter, constantly supplies a charge even if the batteries are fully charged or even if it isn’t connected to any phone. According to the office of Ohio consumers’ council, the waste reaches 50% of the power they use for charging.
Personal printers: Many printers spend hours in standby mode, waiting to receive signals from connected computers. Doing that during working hours may be justified but after working hours it doesn’t make sense to waste power.

Coffee maker: Simple coffee makers that don’t have a clock or an automated brewing system don’t use vampire power. However, if your coffee maker has an LED display or is programmable, it uses vampire power.

Microwave: the microwave constantly uses energy to power its digital clock, even though cooking food uses up much more electricity.

Personal computer monitors: the average power consumed by each is around 15 watts in sleeping mode, which means that the average annual wasted energy per monitor is 87.6 kWh which costs around $11.3 billion for each monitor a year based on average energy cost of 13 cents / kWh. Now you can see how much we waste for thousands of monitors for NOTHING!

Personal desktops: According to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the average wasted power for desktops on sleep mode is around 21.3 W and 15.7 W for a notebook, so if after finishing your work day, you left it on for 16 hours a day, 365 days per year, it will waste around 124.4 kWh a year, which means around $16 a desktop a year. Imagine how much it will cost for thousands and thousands of desktops.

There are a lot of other vampires that suck energy and are taking a big bite out of our budget without any benefits. If you have want to know more about how much these vampires use in sleep or standby mode I encourage you to use this calculator which helps you estimate how much energy it requires to power electronics and appliances throughout the year and the calculator identifies even more savings opportunities.

You will be shocked when you see how easy it is to slay these vampires. Here’s a list of suggested ways to lower the phantom load of these appliances:

UNPLUG. UNPLUG. UNPLUG.

This is the easiest way to kill the energy vampires. The rules are simple: If you don’t use it now, SWITCH IT OFF; if you don’t switch it on often, you should then unplug it -- that's the blanket approach to fighting vampire power. You can make this step even easier with a surge protector or power strip. 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.

USE energy star products

When it comes time to purchase new or replace old electronics and appliances, consider replacing them with ENERGY STAR devices. They have a lower standby consumption than your average device and use less energy all around.

We need to think smartly about energy. We don’t say “don’t use” but we do say “use it efficiently.” These things are simple, small things you can do that really will impact the mission and also increase the money in your pocket when you use energy smartly. Remind yourself that small things make big changes.

• Date Taken: 10.26.2021
• Date Posted: 10.26.2021 05:11
• Story ID: 407986
• Location: CAMP LEMONNIER, DJ
• Hometown: CAIRO, EG