New gadget finally kills the power vampires in my home

Hey good to hear that things are going OK for you!!
That’s a nice simple solution!! I wonder if anyone has built a model that has Australian / New Zealand connectors…… some research is about to happen!!

I hate to be the one to ask but…..
how much standby power does the new power strip itself draw?
REPLY:Well if it drew more than it saved, it would be a recipe for product disaster. Since it’s been around from Jan 2008 at CES, so far no complaints in that area that I’ve found. With no plugs in, it does not register in the short term on my kill-a-watt meter, so I’ll have to say less that .1 kWh – Anthony

A few years ago I read a blog of someone who did like you and measured the vampire power in his house. I didn’t want to measure the power, but I did count how many things were always on. It was around 35 which until I read this post I thought was a lot. I was surprised to see that 40 is typical. Guess we’re not so bad. I had no idea that vampire power amounted to nearly 10% of home power use. We haven’t done much about it other than buy a power strip that turns off some things in the entertainment area when the TV is turned off. I think there is definitely a use for those power strips since a bunch of the always on items are remote controlled and no one wants to have to get up to turn on something that has a remote.

Anthony,
This is a helpful and informative post.
You are not the only one with skyrocketing electrical bills that result from these back gound electrical usage.
Thanks and hope all is well.

Tricklesaver essentially does the same thing without you having to hit a switch.
http://www.tricklestar.com/
Essentially it senses the current drop in the master plug (for example) your TV set when you turn it off and then cuts power to the stuff attached to the slave plug (amp, dvd etc) – obviously you’d want to put recording devices (PVR/VCR ect) on their own plug.

After rewiring our older (we consider it “recycled”) home for solar power, we could easily determine the power consumption of our electrical appliances, etc, using the solar inverter. A note of interest to readers, we discovered in this older home that a few of the lights and plug-in receptacles were drawing inexplicably high levels of electricity. My husband replaced the suspect light fixtures and plug-ins and the problem was solved (E.g. from 30 watt draw with a CFL bulb to Zero). Because we are running a full-time solar system we unplug appliances when not in use, so I like this product a lot. I will be purchasing one for use with the computer and peripherals.

Made by Belkin I see, I have a little radio transmitter from them you plug into an MP3 player so you can listen to it over the car stereo or regular radio. It is a sturdy and useful device, if that is anything to go by I expect you’ll get many years use out of this one too.

For those with a power supply backup unit for their computer that has a data link (usually a USB connection) to their computer, some models have software that you can use to see how much power the unit is using. Plugging in an additional device will allow you to calculate how much power the device uses. No need to buy that Kill-a-Watt EZ device if you have a PSU with supported software.

How long do you estimate these things take to pay for themselves?

Here’s some features:

In English that would be “Here are some features:” 😉

@ Andoman (September 5, 2010 at 10:02 pm), excellent point on the wall switches for outlets. We are planning to build a new home in the next few years and will definitely be incorporating this concept into the design. Turn off the light when you leave the room and you will also turn off power to all the electrical outlets.

“I think in a lot of places in the world nearly every outlet has it’s own switch.”
Since moving to North America, I’ve been continually surprised by how bad the power outlet design is for such a litigious part of the world; from a European background the idea of having to pull out a power cord while the power is still on just seems insane.
Back on the standby front I was amazed when I checked out a few of our systems here with a power meter and discovered that, for example, our HTPC takes 24W when running and 6W when ‘powered off’. Is that all just for the sake of having a ‘soft’ power button?

“Should all acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind!” 🙂
Glad to hear things went well.

Anthony, have you considered brushless 12v DC Split Air units with Solar? They’re supposedly extremely efficient. Some of them aren’t so expensive ~$1200, but they require 4/5 solar panels. There’s also Coolerado evaporative units. Perhaps neither would handle yours needs but just supplement.
REPLY: Got links? – Anthony

@ZT:
It depends on your total energy consumption. I think we can assume that Anthony’s vampires aren’t using 10% of his total since his total is high due to air conditioning.
My energy bill is about $50 per month on average. So, 10% of that would be $5 a month. Two units at $35 a pop equates to 14 months before the protectors pay for themselves.
Or I can just unplug the surge protectors at night. Kind of a pain like Anthony states, but I’m reluctant to shell out $70 on two surge protectors.

There’s an even cheaper gizmo around — I found a few as low as around $5, but they’re usually more like $10 — that would do the same job. It’s often sold to switch Christmas Tree lights on and off. Remote but not R/C. It’s a long cord with a male-and-female plug at one end and a toggle switch at the other. Plug in your power bar THROUGH the plug end, and put the switch end in a handy place.
Flip the switch, and the power is cut off. Flip it again and it’s back on.
A Google Shopping search for christmas tree switch cord finds a bunch for much less than $10 each, including many with foot switches.

( Censored ) years ago, a common way to manage a computer and its accessories was a flat skinny switch box that you sat the monitor on top of. They seem to be out of fashion now, at least I haven’t seen any offered lately, but they still work just as well as they ever did. I still have several and find them quite useful in several places, not just for computer gear. Most of mine came from Radio Shack….

I do wonder who has the better electrical system. Here is Australia we use 240 volt but the transformer can be blocks away. There are usually two powerline systems. The high voltage system and the 240 system that runs beneath. Double the wire.
At my residence in the US the high line power was brought to the back of the house, dropped down to 240 through a transformer and then tied to the box. The power was split at the box and then into the house as 120 volt. Pretty safe. All the big wire was in the house and not on the transmission lines.
There are switches on the outlets here in Oz but there are not many outlets. Hard to find more than one to a wall. So everyone uses a lot of power strips.
But the 240volt system has caused problems. The most recent being the insulation program that managed to electrocute a few installers and burn a significant number of homes to the ground. ( word of caution….don’t install aluminum backed insulation near a 240volt ceiling connection.)

energy bill was $620.16
omg! that’s the same as 3 months cost in winter here.

jorgekafkazar says:
In American, that would be “Here’s some of it’s features.”
A slight amendment: In American, that would be “Here’s some of its features.” As my English teacher drummed into my head half a century ago, with the apostrophe, “it’s” is identical to “it is”. Without the apostrophe, it’s the possessive.

Pardon, but where does those vampire Watts go? Heating?
As we have thermostated electrical heating, I guess some of the heating in winter is in fact “vampire heating” which thus doesn’t make a net contribution to heating costs. In summer though if it is warmer than say +22 ºC it is a loss and if it is so warm that I have to use the AC cooling, vampires produces excessive heat that I have to pay for getting rid of.
That gadget of yours then makes some pay off in high summer.

I suspect that my DirectTV TiVo is a power hog. It runs 24/7. But if I shut it off, I miss the scheduled recordings. And it takes forever to boot up.

None of you noticed that while Anthony and I both live in Norcal, we had to heat our place this summer while Anthony needed to cool his.

Thanks for the Aussie link.
We are getting gouged at $150 to $180, so that is off my Christmas list!

For my TV setup i use a simple smart power strip (link to a similar product). It shuts off all the extra boxes (amp, media-pc, when the TV is on stand-by. So the TV still uses a little when it is on stand-by.

In case no one else mentions it: Australia and I believe NZ have a switch on every power point by regulation. So it is easy to turn off the power at the socket unless the socket resides near the floor behind the desk and is somewhere in amongst a lot of wires.

What a brilliantly informative post! I so need one of those babies. I’m constantly forgetting to switch off the PC at the socket (down low and under a desk of course), all my external hard drives with 12v adaptors, my wireless router, TV, freeview box (which I watch like once a month, if that!) etc, etc. I just never realised that these things added up to anything significant when on stand-by. Time to take some action.

Nice article Anthony, but what piqued my interest was the mention of your “Smartmeter installation”. I got a kick out reading about PG&E’s self-inflicted PR injuries. I’d be real interested to read your take on the meters themselves. I’m on the other side of the equation, in that I’m the “meter reader” of the smart meters. It may be that my personal experience has tainted my view, but I’m not really seeing a value to these meters other than giving utilities an ability to come up with novel ways to include more charges and rates on the consumer’s bill……….well and eventually control your appliances much in the same manner you are today.

Personally I resent having to count each watt of my power use because of government failure to allow the energy market to provide me with enough cheap power to use how I see fit. These extortion rates are nothing but electricity ration cards in another form. When they cut the cheap energy allowance again and then again “for our own good” are we supposed to meekly comply each time until we are living cold, mean little lives and wondering if we can afford an extra half hour of heating or television viewing? At what point are we no longer reducing waste but are suffering actual hardship because the government has priced cheap electricity use out of our reach?
We should be raising hell against this kind of government mandated impoverishment of ordinary people, not accepting it as our duty to the planet or whatever other moral fiction the AGW crowd would create for the little people to live by. I want to save money as much as the next man on my power bill but NOT because the government has made it too expensive to live a comfortable life.

Good to see that you are back and that things are improving. May it continue.
In the UK smart meters are available from the power supplier but these have the facility to switch off your power should the power company think that you are using too much, for whatever reason. This is not a good idea and smacks of government control which is not the way of living in a free society.

Bigland says:
September 6, 2010 at 12:33 am
jorgekafkazar says:
September 5, 2010 at 10:48 pm
Jeff Alberts says: Here’s some features:
“In English that would be “Here are some features:” ;)”
In American, that would be “Here’s some of it’s features.”
In English, that would be, “…its features.” :p
And to finish the nit picking session, in either version of English it would still be “here are” as the subject of that particular clause is the plural “features”. Arrange the sentence so that the subject immediately follows the clause it’s connected to: “Here are some features of it.”
Grammar is fun!

The only thing that boggled my mind was your energy price per unit. 11 $cents! Wow. I pay 6 $cents in france. Almost half. The earn the price of the gadget back would take me years and anyway i have an automatic energysaver. My wife has a thing about things running unattended, so if i turn my back for a moment she switches it (tv, radio, stereo, dvd, pc) off.
Way better then a gadget, but admittedly more irritating since you can’t switch it off.

Mr. Watts said:
—————————————————————————————–
My computer workstation where I manage WUWT and research
My wife’s computer workstation with central printer
—————————————————————————————–
I think you could save a lot of power going laptops instead of workstations, laptops are made to save power – and with the battery’s included, you don’t really need a UPS
My yearly power consumption is around 2400kwh ($ 800)

This has been addressed for, oh, over three decades or so, by assorted “home automation” devices. X10 is the one common system, and I forget the names of any others so I’ll talk about X10.
Amazon “X10” search.
Per original design these are not “wireless” systems but they do run their signals on your household wiring thus no extra wiring is needed. Now they have transceiver units that’ll take signals from a wireless RF remote and send them through the wiring.
This is a mature, tested, accepted technology. Just get the heavier-duty 120V appliance module and plug your power strip in. [Ratings explanation: 15A maximum steady draw, 1/3HP motor max, or 500W incandescent lighting max since tungsten filaments have practically no resistance until they heat up and glow thus there’s a large initial current surge.] Then plug in a controller, you can put one in the room and one in your bedroom as well. There are many “channels” to use. Set modules and controllers to one of sixteen “home” settings, the module to one of sixteen “unit” settings… And you’re done. Appliance modules are on/off, the newest lamp modules can dim incandescents.
Here is the X10.com Automation page (and I agree it’s a garish layout). There are many options these days, there is even PC-based control available (turn your houselights on and off in Idaho while in Hong Kong). Among the modules there are 220V units (15 and 20A) and relay-type units (low voltage switching).
On the X10 site, you better click for the details of their “low-price guarantee”, then plan on buying from Amazon or elsewhere when available and cheaper. You’ll see why. Currently to do what your single $34.99 Belkin strip can do, will cost around that much with X10 equipment (appliance module, transceiver, RF remote), less for a fixed-position controller, and you need your own power strip. But to control another group of equipment, you won’t be paying another $34.99, more like $10 with shipping plus another power strip.
Also X10, an industry standard, has been around for some time thus several companies have made and do make X10 equipment, Leviton for example. Back in the day, as I seem to recall, the local Radio Shack store was selling X10 gear across from the TRS-80’s.

“I suspect that my DirectTV TiVo is a power hog. It runs 24/7. But if I shut it off, I miss the scheduled recordings. And it takes forever to boot up.”
The same thing applies in the UK with Sky TV boxes – I measured ours with a similar device and the standby consumption was little different to running mode. Now that analogue TV is being switched off in favour of digital the problem gets worse. All these devices have the tuners and most of the processors running 24/7 to check for updates, and as mentioned above, for timed recordings. So to switch these off every night is not very practical, and is undoubtedly why so few people do.
As to the legion of small 12volt DC adaptors – I set up a separate system with a battery backup to power my shortwave and airband radios, which also keeps my telephone answering machine operational. I wonder if this might actually be more efficient than individual adaptors, as well as preventing mains surges, and covering for power cuts.
I also turn off the wireless broadband router every night which saves power, and reduces the likelyhood of anyone trying to “hack” it. Before anyone mentions, it is well configured with security, but nothing is totally secure….

FYI
Handy rule of thumb: For every kilowatt consumed inside the home your air conditioner needs half a kilowatt to pump out the waste heat.

“………….PG&E actually punishes residences who consume over the allowed 445 kwh baseline in tiers…………”
In this side of the world this happens also with water, the more you consume the more you pay per cubic meter.
IMHO all this is against basic market principles. The more you buy an item from, say, a manufacturer a better price you get, this way employment and wealth may be generated.

Leon:
“My message for the greenie weenies: Don’t tell me to save the planet, tell me how I can save my poor wallet. Don’t send people off on a guilt trip, appeal to their self-interest.”
And thats why they have the california policies and tried to pass cap and trade. Jack up the cost of energy so much that you’re forced to find alternatives.

I also meant to start my last post with:
Anthony, glad to hear that things are as back on track as can be expected. My continued good wishes for you”
Which I have now fixed 🙂

Poor old Reddy Kilowatt just doesn’t get the respect these days he used to.
Reddy Kilowatt
It makes him sad.

blast that enter key.
to continue :
set top boxes, which belong to the cable company, are a different issue on the personal (but not global Co2) level. makes no sense to keep ’em on if you don’t have to pay to replace them.
transformers for phone chargers etc, that draw power even when nothing is attached are another good target for elimination.
But me, I’ll keep my expensive electronic toys nice and toasty, thanks.

http://www.ledwholesalers.com/store/ lists a full range of LED lighting. I have no connection with them other than that of a customer. Some of their lighting is rated for 90V->240V AC input so that should be good for our overseas friends. Go with the SMD leds. The bulbs that are a million small normal leds eventually die by thermally stressing their connections to the circuit board. The Kill-a-watt is uber useful. Another useful article is the power strip that has a control outlet. It will only feed power to the other outlets when there is draw on that socket. I use it on my computer. Shut down the computer and it shuts down everything connected to the computer like the printer, both LCD displays, and so forth.

Anthony,
“PG&E is a monopoly, and the Public Utilities Commission in California actually approved this outrageous rate hike” (Approved or required? There is a difference. Steamboat Jack)
“That’s why my July 2010 energy bill was $620.16”
**********************************************************
My condolences on your high energy bill. But…..
Consider it a sort of “stupid tax”. It is a tax put in place by stupid people. And it is a penalty that you must pay if you stay in California. And don’t blame PG&E-they are just passing along taxes that are required by the politicians THAT YOU ELECTED.
You as in the California electorate. The majority of those that vote.
If the taxes were spent on something useful, you could excuse it. But they throw your money, the money that you have earned, away on doo-doo and there is no excuse.
If you don’t like living under a grossly stupid regime, then move. I did. It’s called “voting with your feet”. As have many other Californians.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t see any way of staying in California and changing things. And staying in California would just give those fools more resources (my tax dollars) to perpetuate their stupidity.
We have room here in Texas for refugees. I am starting a half-way house to re-orient people that escape from California. If you want to escape, I can help you get acclimated here; just let me know.
It’s too bad, though, that we get Californians that leave California because it is un-livable, then come here and want to change it to what they left.
As they used to say in Oregon back in the early 60’s: “Don’t Californicate Oregon”. Too late for them. I just hope Texas is big enough that Californians can’t do here what they did in Oregon.
Regards,
Steamboat Jack (Jon Jewett’s evil twin)

Even if the total for your entire hours is 200W, this amounts to a kWh every 5 hours, or 144kWh/month. Let’s assume you install switches and turn this draw off for 8 hours a night, this will cut the vampire consumption a third, saving your 48kWhs, or about $20/month at the highest rate.
I mean it’s not chump change, but it’s marginally worth the inconvenience – and my cable box doesn’t like to be sans power. It forgets everything and has to re-download the cable guide.

Anthony, am glad you are back and hope your family medical issues were successfully resolved. You have motivated me to do an energy audit of my house.
I would like to comment on 2 home energy issues not discusses above (unless it missed it in the comments). First: I didn’t see ceiling fans in the . I have 6 along with remote control modules. We do forget to turn them off when we go to bed. Second: I am fortunate enough to live in an area where heat pumps are effective. Last winter I found out the expensive way that if you set them more than 2 deg (?) warmer than the room temperature they automatically kick on the emergency heating strip. See page 4 of this .

Apparantly I screwed up the HTML tags. My previous should read
Anthony, am glad you are back and hope your family medical issues were successfully resolved.
I would like to comment on 2 home energy issues not discusses. First: I didn’t see ceiling fans in http://standby.lbl.gov/summary-chart.html. I have 6 along with remote control modules. We do forget to turn them off when we go to bed. Second: I am fortunate enough to live in an area where heat pumps are effective. Last winter I found out the expensive way that if you set them more than 2 deg (?) warmer than the room temperature they automatically kick on the emergency heating strip. See page 4 of http://www.sdge.com/documents/forms/heatpumps.pdf.

$620 electric bill!!!! No wonder California is going down the toilet, but like they say, so goes California, so goes the country. I have a fit when our electric bill approaches $100!
Wow! The extent some feel compelled to go in order to save a few dollars is mind boggling, but after reading Anthony’s electric bill, just WOW! It’s hard to believe we still live in America. Now energy is a political tool to force us to lower our standard of living to satisfy a small minority of environmental kooks bent on controlling our lives, not to mention money for politicians to waste.
Geothermal is the way to go; that’s what we did. Total cost for heating/cooling/hot water? Under $500 per year in Northern Michigan.

There’s another huge power-hog out there that isn’t very amenable (at least as yet) to individual saving measures: single-phase electric motors.
In actual fact there’s no such thing. A mechanical crank is metastable — the slightest move off dead center produces a moment that makes it keep going. Your car engine’s crankshaft is an example. The electromagnetic equivalent is stable — a push off dead center produces a moment that returns it to center. An electric motor therefore requires at least two out-of-phase magnetic fields to turn at all.
Motors that apparently run on single phase have internal means of creating the second phase. In old-fashioned DC motors it’s the commutator. “Brushless” DC motors are actually AC induction motors containing electronics that convert DC to polyphase AC. Small, cheap AC motors are “shaded pole”, in which a shorted winding produces the second phase. Larger motors use combinations of capacitors and inductance, usually special windings within the motor, to accomplish the same thing. All of those methods have something in common: they waste power. A shaded pole motor can dissipate as much as a third of its input power in heat generated by the shorted winding. Medium-sized motors have to have switches (“starters”) to provide an extreme phase shift at startup and change over to a lesser shift at speed, because running with full shift all the time would melt the motor but the amount of phase shift while running isn’t enough to start the load. Big motors have to be fed polyphase power from outside, because they can’t economically be built to dissipate the heat generated by the phase shifting mechanism; that effect becomes notable somewhere around half a horsepower/400W. Motors up to two HP/1500W with internal phase converters are available, but they are bigger, heavier, and more expensive than they need to be, both to dissipate the heat created by the phase shifter and because the phase shift mechanism uses capacitors rather than inductance, which is more efficient but bigger, bulkier, and more expensive, besides being notoriously a point of failure, as are the switches that shift from “start” to “run” mode.
Another pernicious effect of “single phase” motors is feedback into the distribution system. The phase shifter is across the input lines, and its effect is to reduce the “power factor”, which is the voltage-current relationship. Reduced power factor makes everything draw more power than it should, even resistance heaters. The effect is magnified because induction motors are inherently synchronous, meaning that the feedback push from all of them adds rather than being distributed randomly. Factories and shops that use a lot of motors aren’t allowed to run on single-phase because of that effect, because the power-factor shift would affect everyone negatively.
Go through your house and add up the power draw of all the small motors. Most of them are air-movers of one type or another, fridge fans and HVAC air distribution and condenser blowers (combined in window AC units), but washing machine and dryer motors are mostly shaded-pole because it’s cheap, and window AC units use shaded-pole compressor motors for the same reason. Roughly a quarter of that power, somewhere between a fifth and a third, is wasted in the motors’ internal phase shifters; you also pay for, but don’t get the use of, another 1-2% of your total bill because your meter actually measures current, and the power factor shift increases current draw without increasing actual power usage. The electric company isn’t cheating you with that, either, because the generating distribution system has to have expensive (and power-wasting) means of correcting the problem at their end. That effort is harder and more expensive than it might be here in the United States, because local distribution is “delta” rather than “wye”; the power-factor imbalance causes circulating current in the transformers, which wastes heat to the atmosphere before the energy can ever be used.
A total changeover from internal-shift to polyphase-fed motors could save as much as a third of the total power used by motors; the estimates I’ve seen are that this would amount to between 5% and 10% of total power usage. Unfortunately the capital cost of the change would be enormous — it would mean rewiring every home and small office on the planet and replacing almost every motor-driven appliance, and just smelting the copper to do that would eat up all the energy savings in at least a five-year period.
Modern electronics might come to the rescue. The fans in computers and electronic gear used to be shaded pole; they have almost all now gone to polyphase induction with transistor-based phase converters (the so-called “brushless DC” motor). Machine shops and other users of medium to large motors are rapidly changing over to electronic phase converters that rectify incoming single phase to DC and create a polyphase output; the conversion is more efficient than the motors’ internal phase converters, and as a bonus the converters can also vary the frequency, giving variable speed without complicated (and power-robbing) gears and belts. At present such converters are too expensive for use in most appliances, but I’ve already seen one high-end refrigerator that uses brushless-DC fan motors to meet “energy star” requirements, and one can hope that it is only a matter of time before advances in engineering and economies of scale bring those advantages to HVAC units, washing machines, and dryer blowers, all of which could benefit not only from the power saving in bulk polyphase generation but from the ability to run at variable speed without mechanical arrangements that cost money, rob power, and require maintenance.
Regards,
Ric

If the “problem” is defined as incremental increases in power useage, why would California encourage illegal immigration?
Each person who slips across the border uses many times what you, with your out-of-pocket expense, save. The State has supposed shortages of electricity, jobs, housing, water, schools, jails and freeways which it simultaneously exacerbates with its unacknowledged policies.
All at your expense, and if you mention it, you’re a bad person.

I also believe in room power switch outlets. When the room switch is off, the lights and all the outlets in that room are turned off. Easy to install and no extra gadgets required. I live in a way old ranch house that when wired for electricity, there was only one switch that turned the entire room on and off, including all the plug ins (which were typically hanging from the light or at most, only one on the wall for everything).

$68 in June and up to 90 in July. We use electric stove and bake very little in the summer. We also wash dishes but have an electric clothes dryer. We do not turn on a tv every month. Electric rates in the prairie seem lower.

I bought a 3-outlet remote (RF) monitoring set from a gadget shop around the beginning of this year. There are 3 sensors that plug into outlets and a wireless display/counter. Very handy if you’re wondering how much it’s costing to watch TV, etc..
The outlet meter into which I’ve plugged all my computers, etc. shows 1182 kWh consumed over 2860 hours. Very little of that is standby power. Quiescent, the stuff draws about 360W. I turn off the “desktop” computer if I’m away for more than a couple of days but the server and firewall are on all the time.
OTOH, when I’m using the colour laser printer to print, it drinks heavily from the wire; drawing over 1 kW. But that’s for 30 seconds a day on average.
The outlet meter into which I’ve plugged my TV, Hi-Fi, etc has recorded 195 kWh over 2883 hours. The standby power, when I’m not away for more than a couple of days, runs at 21 watts. There are about 20 devices plugged in, but only 8 draw “standby”. One is a network switch (always on) to slurp media from the net through the Digital TV PVR/STB, Blue-Ray DVD which shows AccuWeather (and other stuff), or the DAB receiver which can also play streaming media.
Most of the equipment that I have in the house which has a “standby” mode consumes less than 3W on standby. Much of it consumes less than 1W.
I waste more energy having to leave CFL lights on so that I can see what I’m doing when I walk into a room. When I had proper light bulbs, I’d switch on the light when I entered aroom, and switch the light off when I left. Now it seems that I leave the kitchen light on for 6 to 10 hours a day, instead of the hour or so that I actually need it.
While renovating the bathroom, I put in a motion sensor and (now) LED lights, for both convenience and to save money on electricity. The motion sensor uses less than 1W. The LED lights had better last 10 years to pay for themselves.

Smokey: VA are NOT watts when you talk about AC circuits. Has to do with power factor. If volts and amps are in phase, like DC, then yes. But usually not. So you draw more amps and VA’s (OK, VAs) And pay for it. Even if the power company tells you they charge for kWh’s.
Here in southern CO, my electric bill runs about $45/mo. Of that $25 is Customer Service Charge, for the honor of being connected to the utility. $20/mo of actual electricity. I have a handful of these vampires, no where near 40. And hard to imaging much savings if I turned them off. $2/mo? Long payoff time.
As for the 120/240 debate (there is no 115, 117, 110), 120 is less likely to kill you than 240. 480 will throw you across the room, 240 will not. 120 takes more copper. And, after my travels in France and the U.K., electricical safety codes on the east side of the pond are a joke. Which is not to say ours are a lot better. Conduit is the only sane way to wire a house. Romex is a disaster waiting to happen. Build a Colorado style house near Chicago and go to jail.
My 8 year old desktop, router, network disk drive, and fairly new LCD monitor use about 80w according to my power monitor (and display on the UPS). A notebook would take less, but not near as much fun. Big displays are nice. Full size keyboards, separate numeric keypads. And a real mouse instead of that @#$% touchpad.
I’ll pay the $20.

Steamboat Jack says:
September 6, 2010 at 6:56 am
” get the Californians to move to Texas……………..”
I think that, if you do the aritmetic, all the people in the world 6.7 billion [approx]could fit into Texas and have about 1000 square feet of space each.
NO?
Lots of room it seems. 😉
Texas is big

Alexej Buergin says:
September 6, 2010 at 3:10 am
” inversesquare says:
September 6, 2010 at 1:06 am
The main advantage of this system is that nothing in the system is at a higher potential than 115 Volts relative to ground. This simple safety advantage has saved countless lives compared to 230 Volt systems.”
So that is why people all over the world are dropping like flies? Can you show us a statistic about that? Were there more electrocuted folks when Europe changed to 220V?
(And they did not have the modern security devices then, that automatically shut off the power. And yes, 220V feel exactely like 110V.)
I think you’ll find that I didn’t say that….. It was someone else;)

Looks something like our home, except our problem is a long, cold winter, with about 7 hours of daylight at the winter solstice. We have similar problem hubs AND provincial carbon tax, graded for basic and “over” use. Thanks for the tip, as we, too, look for and apply conservation measures with common sense.

In Europe we don’t use a/c. When it is hot we just open the freezer.

Welcome back, hope all is good. Seems the vampire you really need to slay is your electricity provider.

Ric Werme:
“EEs are taught to keep one hand in a pocket when connecting injurious voltage sources. Current flow in a hand to hand shock is through the middle of the chest, not good!”
Current flow from hand to foot is far more dangerous but fortunately electricians rarely have their bare feet in contact with a conductor.
I got my first radio controlled switch, one transmitter and two receivers, several years ago. This was more for laziness than economy; I could switch everything off with one push of a button rather than bending behind the computer then crawling around under the stairs to turn off the router, NAS, etc.
They were quite expensive and must never have sold as I returned to the same shop a couple of weeks later where I found a binful going cheap so I bought two more.
More recently British Gas gave my mother a remote switch and a meter. She had no use for them so I took them home and gave the meter a try.
I found that my base load was 270 Watt! There have been some big changes since then.

Actually in American it would be “Here’s some of its features” since ‘it’s’ is not the possessive but is the contraction for ‘it is’. If you substitute ‘it is’ for its contraction in the sentence you will see that it makes no sense.
jorgekafkazar says:
September 5, 2010 at 10:48 pm
Jeff Alberts says: Here’s some features:
“In English that would be “Here are some features:” ;)”
In American, that would be “Here’s some of it’s features.”

Kill-a-watt?? Sounds like a nefarious plot by the warmers to do away with Anthony.
Just kidding. Actually I bought one a year ago.

2052 kWh of use in July? Holy cow, my electric use isn’t anywhere near that. I know you mentioned heavy A/C usage, but I’m guessing the real culprit is your 12-person jacuzzi and the home tanning bed! Don’t worry, your secret is safe with us. 🙂
I’ve thought of looking into a kill-a-watt for a long time, but so far hadn’t decided it was worth it yet, based on the cost and the minimal impact to my electric usage. Thanks for the tips though — I’ll have to check it out. Kind of have an urge to run out to Fry’s today anyway . . .
REPLY: No, it’s a/c, we have gas hot water. No jacuzzi, no waterbeds, but we do have an electric dryer…- A

jorgekafkazar says:
September 5, 2010 at 10:48 pm
Jeff Alberts says: Here’s some features:
“In English that would be “Here are some features:” ;)”
In American, that would be “Here’s some of it’s features.”
In Canadian, that would be “not all features on all models, and models with features are special order. Some features available at extra cost, eh?”

Here’s a hidden “power vampire” you likely haven’t heard about: your thermostat system(s).
Your wall-mounted thermostat most likely is low-voltage. (There are some line voltage thermostats, used for electric baseboard heat and in-wall mounted heaters without their own thermostats.) So down at your furnace, for example, there is a power supply, likely an iron and copper transformer, supplying that voltage to your thermostat, waiting for it to switch on when it will also power a relay that turns the heating on.
Do you have separate central heating and cooling systems? Each has its own power supply. Have you “zoned” your heating, perhaps while trying to save money, letting you set different temperatures for different areas? For two zones, you likely have three supplies, one for each thermostat plus the controller back at the furnace, possibly more. Also, a furnace that maintains a standby temperature, like for a hot water (hydronic) system, also uses power just monitoring that temperature.
Is winter approaching and you are done using your central air conditioning? Turn off the breaker. Summer approaching, done with using the central heating, turn off that breaker.
BTW, do you have mixers on your water lines? Those are the “anti-scalding” devices that mix cold water into your hot water to keep you (the idiotic water-user) from accidentally using too much heat, aka automatic mixing valves, likely set around 120°F. These days they may be required where you live. If your furnace is your water heater (“domestic hot water coil” built into your hydronic furnace) there normally is only one thermostat controlling the furnace, set to the temperature of the water circulated for heat, thus you may have a whole-house mixer. Mixers may be point-of-use ones such as for your shower, added to the plumbing or even part of the valve(s) as with some shower faucets.
Thus you may be paying to heat water hotter than you are actually using it. With a domestic hot water coil, check the setting of your furnace for non-house-heating months and set it to what you need for just water heating, which is good to do with or without mixers. If you have mixers, consider if you really need hotter water at certain locations, like the kitchen sink, and if not then set the water temperature below the mixer setting.
In concept, I like the idea of plumbing a house with only cold-water lines until you get to an “area of use” like the kitchen or a bathroom, and at one you use a tank-less “instantaneous” water heater. Too bad the buggers cost so much, and non-electric ones have additional hookups needed like fuel lines and exhaust venting, thus possibly negating any savings over the expected life of the units versus traditional central water heating.

Does your A/C route the evaporator condensate back to the outside condenser for additional cooling? I saw somewhere that this can improve A/C efficiency by up to 10%.
I didn’t want to punch a hole in my garage brick (no windows) for an air conditioner and modified a 13,500 BTU window unit with a condenser jacket for water cooling with the water dumped outside through a garden hose hole in the brick. The unit has a delta of 26-28 deg F with less than 1GPM usage. Of course it helps that I am on a well with a water softener and don’t have separate water utility rates.
Unfortunately it is really difficult to get overall large efficiency improvements without major changes in the house (extra insulation, better windows, good attic ventilation, etc.) which can be expensive if contracted.
Probably the best way to dramatically improve this kind of situation is to move to an area where the cost of living, including electric/gas rates is way less.

You guys are nibbling around the edges. This thread has been like watching Obama recommend that a good way of increasing your fuel economy is to check your tire pressure.
I have been amazed to read this entire thread and to see that only Steamboat Jack, who suggested voting with your feet, and Mr Black, who wrote,
“We should be raising hell against this kind of government mandated impoverishment of ordinary people, not accepting it as our duty to the planet or whatever other moral fiction the AGW crowd would create for the little people to live by. I want to save money as much as the next man on my power bill but NOT because the government has made it too expensive to live a comfortable life.” even hinted at the real problem.
The real problem is renewable-power mandates.
The greenies love them, because they get built into the power bill, so everyone has to pay. Electric utilities love them because their cost is embedded in the rate base, so that a markup is incorporated into the tariff used to calculate consumers’ power bills.
The ‘renewable power’ lobby loves them, because they disguise the true cost of ‘green power.’
I hate them, because they ruin once-pristine windy vistas, and kill thousands of birds in the process, doing so at obscenely high cost.
Every wind generator and every solar generating facility increases your power bill because of the purchase mandates that require utilities to purchase the power at the inflated rates necessary to make the wind and solar facilities profitable, not to mention the tax preferences and other subsidies involved in their construction.
I pay Puget Sound Energy $.085544 per kwh, plus and minus nickels and dimes, for my power. Puget’s production costs, for other than renewables, haven’t increased very much since the time when I paid them about $.06 per kwh. the difference is renewable mandates, plus a little inflation.
If you continue to vote for politicians who are cheerleaders and advocates for renewable power, your bills are going to increase, and you will be responsible for that increase, which occurs as a result of your actions.
No amount of tinkering with incidental loads in your house is going to make a tinker’s damn worth of difference.
It’s going to get worse. The renewable guys are promoting the idea of “feed-through tariffs”, a scheme used to promote investments in solar and wind power by individuals, in which you will have not a smart meter, but two meters. One meter will measure the power used by you, and the other will measure power generated by you, for which you will be paid an exhorbitant, mandated price.
The way this is sold is to argue that peaking power is sold at the spot price, which is very high, so that the market will turn to renewable sources, which generate power for a subsidized, but less than spot price. In this way, adherents are able to argue that the use of renewable actually lower the cost of electrical power for everyone.
Their claim is based on the false premise of the very high true cost of peaking (Usually natural gas fired turbine) electrical power.
If you don’t start to vote against politicians who will shaft you with renewable mandates, you have only yourself to blame. I’d suggest that you hold your inflated power bill up next your face as you look in the mirror, while you say, “It’s your fault, dummy.”
If any site on the web is more rational than this about climate issues, I have yet to find it. I’m surprised that commenters here have not been more aware of the true cost of climatological and environmental claptrap, and more aware of the cost of government intervention in what should be free markets.

I’m on the board of a condominium association that has mandated exterior lighting, the use of which is intended to illuminate house numbers at night, mostly for the use of visitors and emergency responders. We originally specified 50PAR30 lamps for the purpose in the installed downlights that illuminate house numbers, but we have have subsequently replaced those, as they fail, with 11-watt, Edison-base CF lamps. Since the lamps are on all night, the energy saving is considerable. I would argue that this is a reasonable use of energy-saving techniques.

Coming from the UK I love the unswitched outlets, in England one of my family would switch off AND unplug the bloody thing (kettle etc) given that the UK outlets were double pole switches this was plain foolishness, iritating when you plug in the kettle, switch it on and it never boils????, what about the microwave? I was pleased to read the LED light bit, CFLs are a crock, I cannot find the study that actually measured the average real world consumption of incadesent, cfl and quartz halogen/dimmer, the last being the cheapest in both consumption and longevity/initial cost.

Chris Edwards,
” I was pleased to read the LED light bit, CFLs are a crock, I cannot find the study that actually measured the average real world consumption of incadesent, cfl and quartz halogen/dimmer, the last being the cheapest in both consumption and longevity/initial cost.”
In my association, we decided that CFL, Edison base lamps were the best for lamps that would be illuminated all night.
In my own home, I use mostly halogen lamps dimmed by fade-on, fade-off dimmers that I purchased at considerable cost. Replacing those with CFL lamps, not controllable by the dimmers I have installed, would be unacceptable. I don’t like the quality of light supplied by CF lamps.

Jim (Sep 6, 12:20 pm)
Thanks for the followup comments. I could (unfortunately?) write about 600 pages on the various diesel options, their pros and cons. I read “too much” and then “think too much”.
The starting load, especially for inductive loads starting pumps (as in A/C compressors) is always a difficult problem. It’s one of the first electrical engineering things that mechanical engineers were (are?) taught. A large flywheel (turning at perhaps several times crank speed) on the generator helps.
Modern power electronics provide more options for dealing with the starting loads. e.g. Brushless DC generation and solid-state A/C synthesis, drawing surge currents from the engine’s starter battery. Not as cheap and simple as a flywheel, but much lighter and more compact.
My example illustrated that the electricity provider must be completely clueless and expect their customers to be even more ignorant and helpless; if they expect the customer to pay the company at a rate higher than than what the customer can easily produce by themselves.
A combined heat-and-power system, with perhaps a direct-drive a/c compressor is a bigger investment, but the cost of “electricity” to “DIY” is then potentially less than the 29 cents a kWh being charged for the amounts in the second step above “base”.
If the customer also has an off-grid PV solar system with their own storage batteries, then that can be integrated as well, utilising the batteries to supply all electrical power at periods of low demand and using the generator to charge the batteries when there isn’t enough sun. That increases overall generator efficiency as it spends less time running with very low loads. Engine efficiency tends to be poor when the load is below about 20% of maximum rated.

Jim —
I’m showing my age, I suppose. When I first started getting into computers and electronics back in the late Sixties (!), electronic equipment normally came in “relay racks” two feet wide by two and a half deep by anything up to seven feet tall, cooled by small fans more or less identical to the condenser fan in a fridge, i.e. 5-15W shaded pole motors. Later, commercially available one-piece “muffin” fans became popular, but they were still 110V shaded-pole motors. Those were used up until about the mid-eighties, when DC fans began encroaching on their territory, but big racks of electronics still sometimes have “fan trays” made with those things. I don’t know of any desktop PC that used AC fans after about the TRS-80 era; the IBM-descended and Apple PCs used brush-motor DC fans until brushless DC fans started getting cheap sometime around 1990 or so.
No, brushless DC motors don’t work on the shaded-pole principle. As I said, they use electronics to create polyphase AC and run on that. The Hall sensors you describe are used for timing; they drive the pass transistors that control the current to each motor phase. Because they change phase based on rotor position rather than frequency, their speed can be varied by varying the current to them, either by changing the voltage or PWM techniques — I’ve used both — just like a brush motor. That doesn’t change the fact that the magnetic circuit inside the motor is polyphase (though not induction, like the motors most people think of as “AC”).
Regards,
Ric

Harry Bergeron ,
You’re correct. The operator is free to cook the numbers and shaft you for power they purchase from elsewhere.
The answer is to create a free market for power. The experience with Enron has interefered with this concept, but one should remember that, when Enron was in business, power was still regulated in California, and the actions of regulators in California exacerbated the problem.

I’m curious: Why does ‘energy’ alone of the services we purchase, occupy a special place deserving of stupidly uneconomic investments in the pursuit of the avoidance of its purchase?
We produce “energy” pretty efficiently, and it makes our lives more comfortable while enriching us in many ways. I understand the desire to use “energy” efficently, but I don’t understand the slavish enthusiasm for protocols that would waste money in the pursuit of the use of less “energy.”

Roger Carr September 5, 2010 at 9:32 pm
Here in Michigan USA our power is 250 volts at 60Hz
mine on a volt meter is 247vac, that is the truth don’t be fooled by
old folk speak I.E. 110v is not right and has not been for oh 80years or so.
back in the day of the late 1800s the voltage was 108v 50 cycles.
We can’t get it into the old duffs heads that times have changed!
Now, a brown out is 118vac if it gets any worse they shut it down! (black out)
Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
September 5, 2010 at 11:47 pm
energy bill was $620.16
omg! that’s the same as 3 months cost in winter here.
That is what I thought too! I have electric heat also!
Just bought two more LED light bulbs for those places where the lights are on 24/7
for 35$ would it not be cheaper just wire a switch to the outlet? or use a on/off outlet timer? Christmas time has lots to choose from.
we only would gain from June through August here as all used power is heat for the house so turning off a light or a VCR or DVR will cause the base board heat to come on more.
Tim

Robert C says:
September 5, 2010 at 11:24 pm
“….Oh, and don’t turn off tube-type TV’s – it will shorten the life of the picture tube. The “normal” on/off switch keeps a small current on at all times so the tube will
1 last longer
2 turn on faster
Unplugging the set will allow the filament to cool off .. very bad.”
Robert, it seems that you never yet used a watt meter like KILL A WATT.
Buy or borrow one! Use it and be prepared for a BIG surprise. It is probably true that turning power for your TV off and on will shorten the life of the CRT. However, about eight years ago I used KILL A WATT to measure what our CRT TV consumed when it was off. I found that there was no difference in consumption. It used 300 W on or off. The only thing that was being shut off when the TV power switch was on Off was the high-voltage supply for the CRT. To kill all the power to the CRT (advisable when you go to sleep or leave the house), I had to switch off the power outlet or unplug the TV.
The power costs for our CRT display on the computer were much the same.
I now have only LCD devices for TVs and computers. That not only cuts power consumption in half for all display devices, but it saved me so much on power consumption that I consider it a waste of my time to worry about doing better than I did.
Anthony’s advice for saving on air conditioning if power consumption is reduced is good for where air conditioning is a must. In areas where in addition to a power bill there is also a heating bill, or where part of the power bill covers heating, power used and waste-heat produced by non-heating devices (e. g.: incandescent light) is not necessarily wasted. The waste heat of those devices cuts back on the cost of heating (an important consideration in areas where homes are being heated for nine months of the year or more).
How much you save depends on what it costs to heat your home. Eliminating incandescent lights and replacing them with fluorescent lights will most likely drive up your heating costs by a substantial amount, for the same reason that it will reduce air-conditioning costs.

“Smokey says:
September 6, 2010 at 10:03 am
Watts = E x I [voltage X current]. It is derived from Ohm’s Law:
http://www.csgnetwork.com/ohmslaw2.html”
Smokey, why don’t you read what it says at the site you mention?
With Q charge, W work, E potential difference, I current, P power, R resistance, t time:
Power is DEFINED (in mechanics) by P=W/t
Potential difference (Voltage) is DEFINED by E=W/Q
Thus P=EQ/t=EI
Resistance is DEFINED by R=E/I
Ohm’s law says resistance is more or less constant provided certain physical conditions (especially the temperature) do nor alter
Thus P=EI=RI^2=E^2/R
Concerning the units of measurement (in this case even Americans use the International System):
The Ampere is DEFINED as a base unit by the SI
The Watt is defined in mechanics (Joule/second)
Thus the Volt is Watt/Ampere (or Watt=Volt*Ampere)
The Ohm is defined as Volt/Ampere (the SI being coherent, meaning no conversion factors)

” Larry Geiger says:
September 7, 2010 at 6:16 am
Every safety group I know says that plugging multi-outlet cords into multi-outlet cords is a big no-no. Not allowed anywhere that I’ve worked that had regular safety inspections.”
Why is that a problem? If the current gets too big, the fuse will pop.

The specs didn’t list anything other than a 15 amp limit. I expected a lower limit for the switched outlets. Can this thing really electronically switch 15 amps at that price point? Nice find. I wonder how long it will last.

Glad to see things are stable Anthony. Your site was in good hands while you were gone.
I accidentally purchased a power strip by SurgeMaster which is made for taming the little transformers. It has one master plug with three slave plugs, and one pass-through plug. When the master device is off, the slaves go off, too. It was hilarious when I had an electric fan plugged into a slave socket, and a recharging unit in the master.
On Off On Off (repeat)
I will happily add more of these strips, but I don’t get too excited about it. We do need a term, similar to “loglo” (from Neil Stephenson’s “Snow Crash”), that denotes the glow of various LED devices throughout the house. Excluding clocks and appliances with displays that are always on, I can come up with well over 40 LEDs on things around the first floor of the house.
I’m a musician, so I have tons of gear with LED status lamps, which I usually leave plugged in.
Time for an Energy Audit at The Boogie.

the only thing plugged in at my house is the refrigerator. everything else is powerstripped and the powerstrips get turned on when in use.
keeps the electric bill as low as $11 in summer.

Smokey,
Sorry for the late follow ups, but it seems others are on top of it ;^)
Yep, I’m talking about AC power into inductive/capacitive loads.
Large factories (with lots of large motors) would get killed on the power bill due to having to pay for the VA consumption instead of the power actually used to produce work (the Watts or V*A*powerFactor). What was typically done was to use synchronous motors for the ventilation systems since they can be tuned to appear as a capacitive load (and cancel out the inductive loads). The benefit is a more neutral power factor and better utilization of the power bill. You can also see capacitors wired into the power lines around town in places the power company is trying to correct the power factor. As to what residential meters actually measure. I’m still convinced that they also measure VA, but I wouldn’t bet on it ;^)

“ … Alexej Buergin says:
September 7, 2010 at 8:28 am
” Larry Geiger says:
September 7, 2010 at 6:16 am
Every safety group I know says that plugging multi-outlet cords into multi-outlet cords is a big no-no. Not allowed anywhere that I’ve worked that had regular safety inspections.”
Why is that a problem? If the current gets too big, the fuse will pop. …”
‘Daisy-chaining’ multi-outlet cords is banned at my present work place and the safety guys are convinced that the reason is to prevent overloads and fire hazards when, as you say, that’s what the fuse is for.
The actual reason is the increased risk of a discontinuity in the safety earth or ground conductor.

There’s a few commenters here who have not studied electrical engineering.
Power (in Watts) = Volts * Amps (for dc).
Power (in VA) = Volts * Amps (for ac).
AC has the problem that the voltage waveform is actually V(t) = K sin wt (where w= omega = 2*pi*f, where f= line frequency).
And current is I(t) = K sin (wt + p).
Now when the current and voltage are in phase all is fine and dandy and the VA = Watts. But when the current and voltage have a phase angle difference (that little p = phi, the angle) above, then the VA is not the watts.
Your plain ole power meter normally measures watts, not VA, which is one of the reasons your power company likes as many appliances as possible to have as close as possible to unity power factor (ie they want the W = VA because otherwise they can’t bill you easily). Industrial users often have different metering systems to better catch and bill the VARs (Volt-Amps Reactive).
Talk to a few electrical engineers 🙂

Regarding claims about the 230 or such volt AC power option used in Canada and US, beware that people play loose with terminology.
My understanding is that the feed to a small building like a house comes from a transformer with two output windings that are wound in opposite directions.
It seems that people focused on distribution refuse to consider it as two phase, sometimes calling it “split phase”.
But all that users see is two sinusoidal signals that are 180 degrees out of time with each other, which must surely be considered two phases? That phase difference is fundamental to use of the power feed as it gives the double voltage.
(FTR, quoted values vary from 110/220 through 120/240, actual will depend on distribution system voltage drop at the time – which varies with current in the lines. (BC Hydro are trying to adjust output of the substation based on feedback from an end point, to reduce power consumption.)
PS: Seems to me that before pontificating on VA vs watts people need to understand how electrical devices including power meters actually work, which may vary with vintage and location. (There are people selling some kind of PF adjuster for things like refrigerators (which are a motor) but they are over-hyped. I forget why the claimed savings.)
PPS: So who is going to research how to make wall warts more efficient? Seems to me there would be great demand if it can be done, but I do not have the expertise nor the capital. 🙂

An IBM Aptiva of Windows 98 vintage had a PF correcting power supply. (Well designed case, motherboard from Acer. I don’t know what they use today as I unse only laptops – with cord warts. 🙂

Harry Bergeron fails to understand that humans are the ultimate resource – creative, productive beings.
What society would be better off with fewer resources?
(Of course Marxist presumptions are “fixed pie” because they deny the efficacy of the human mind. But we know how many people Marxism ever fed or sheltered or fostered. (North Korea anyone? Even the great experiment of the USSR could not in over seven decades of trying achieve the end used to justify its oppressive means – feed its own people (countries like canada and the US had to provide grain to them).
(And note that the rate of crime and usage of welfare by recent immigrants is the same on average as by people who’ve been in the US a long time. They are just people living their lives.)