I’m back home. Thanks to everyone who helped while I was offline with family medical issues. There are larger challenges ahead but for now things are back to near normal. Thanks to everyone who left kind words in the announcements thread – I feel like Jimmy Stewart at the end of “It’s a Wonderful Life”.
One thing I always like to do on trips south is to visit Fry’s electronics. There, I can take in the full measure of what’s new in the electronics world. While there, I picked up a gadget that solves an ongoing problem in my home. This is worth a read if you want to save money on your power bill.
While some of my incendiary foes like Joe Romm would like to make you believe that I’m anti-everything (his favorite word is “anti-science” when describing anyone who doesn’t agree with him), those of you who read WUWT know that I’m proactively energy efficient. For example, earlier this year I wrote about installing super efficient LED recessed lighting in my home. I’ve yet to see Joe Romm write a single positive thing about what he is doing personally to practice what he preaches.
I recently went through a home energy audit related to my recent Smartmeter installation (which is another story all by itself) and one of the things I decided I needed to do something about was the growing number of vampire power suckers in my home. As we added more technology, the number of always on power sucking wall-warts (120vAC to 12Vdc power transformers) increased.
Until now, there wasn’t any really practical way of dealing with them all, so I thought I’d share this solution since I’m sure many of you have similar problems with vampire power.
First some background. Here’s a video on vampire power from iGo:
Defining the problem:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has a whole website dedicated to standby power issues and offers this assessment:
An individual product draws relatively little standby power (see here for examples) but a typical American home has forty products constantly drawing power. Together these amount to almost 10% of residential electricity use.
That 10% for me is an issue, because on hot summer days when we need a/c the most, that standby power baseline adds to our allowed PG&E baseline use, and when we go over it, our electricity costs escalate rapidly. PG&E actually punishes residences who consume over the allowed 445 kwh baseline in tiers, such that by the time you exceed 200% of baseline, your cost per kwh is now at 40 cents per kWh, which is outrageous.
Unfortunately, PG&E is a monopoly, and the Public Utilities Commission in California actually approved this outrageous rate hike for over baseline use while simultaneously dropping the allowed residential baseline from 512 kWh/month to 445 kWh/month in the last year. It was a major blunder, and this is why Smartmeters have been getting such a bad rap. PG&E chose the worst possible time to start, in May. Combine new rates, smartmeter swaps, and summer temperatures and you get a PR disaster and people up in arms.
Here in the Sacramento valley, we have temperatures here that reach 110 degrees at times, requiring a/c use. My only option now with these new rates is to reduce energy use. Now that’s something I don’t mind doing, I’ve been proactive at it, but I must say I feel discriminated against compared to Californians who live on the more temperature coast, because I already live in an energy star rated newer (4 years) home. They don’t have a/c issues like we do in the central valley.
So in a nutshell, I’m hosed by my location and its summer climate. That’s why my July 2010 energy bill was $620.16 (electric, plus gas, plus loads of taxes and other taxes – like “public purpose programs”, part of which supports climate change research in California) last month for 2052 kWh of use. If it were at regular baseline rate the bill would be half that. So anything I can do to get closer to baseline will be helpful.
Measuring the problem:
I went around my home with an LCD meter called the Kill-a-Watt EZ and determined that I have 3 areas of significant vampire power use that could benefit from a makeover.
These can be ordered from Amazon for about $30 plus shipping and are dirt simple to use. They can show you instantly how much standby power is being drawn on any appliance or power strip. There’s also a graphing version and a power strip version.
While I had all sorts of spots all over the house, I identified three areas where phantom power was concentrated and working to kill the vampires would be a worthwhile effort.
- My computer workstation where I manage WUWT and research
- My wife’s computer workstation with central printer
- Our entertainment center and TV (#1 draw)
All of these had a collection of wall-warts for network switches, speakers, USB hubs, amplifiers, and accessories. The main devices like the TV, DVD player, DVD reorder, satellite box, all had “instant on” features and drew a fair amount of load and most of these were on 24/7. Just looking at them in infrared shows where that power was going:
So not only are they wasting electricity, they are dumping waste heat into the house 24/7, adding load to the air conditioning.
According to this interactive page at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, I had all the vampire family members. My own readings from the Kill-a-Watt meter were right in line with these:
What was the biggest surprise to me was how much standby power my set-top satellite receiver boxes were drawing. I have a newer model and older model from DirecTV. The older model was drawing 31 watts in standby! Again right in line with what LBL says:
You can see the LBL master list of appliance tests for standby power draw here.
Finding a solution:
One way to solve phantom power draw is with power strips. I already use these to corral wall-warts, and when we go on trips I make it a point to reach behind the computer, under the desk, and behind the TV to shut these off.
However, doing that every night is a bit of a pain, and often forgotten in my house. So, the little suckers live through the night and during the day when we aren’t home.
So while a switched power strip *does* solve the problem in principle, it doesn’t in practice due to access. The strips are all behind and/or below something.
I had been toying with the idea of making some sort of remote switch for my power strips so I could easily turn them off when I shut down my PC, or turn off the TV and go to bed. Fortunately, I found a solution at Fry’s yesterday that did just that.
A way cool plug-in gadget that kills power vampires:
I was really happy to find this power strip gadget at Fry’s:
Apparently this was introduced at CES in 2008, but this is the first time I’ve seen it. It pays to advertise I suppose.
In case it isn’t obvious, this is a power strip with a wireless remote switch. The switch can be handled like a TV remote or wall mounted, making it easy to remember to kill the vampire when you turn out the lights to leave the room.
The remote has a range of 60 feet and can be set for 8 different channels so you can have multiple outlet strips in the home. Here’s some features:
Here’s the manual (PDF)
Installation was quick and easy for me, I just daisy chained from my existing power strip and chose which devices to plug in to “always on” and which to put into the “switched” outlets. See below:
Of course I had to make two wall-wart exceptions: answering machine and my home weather station (which has a data logger and automatically updates a web page). Now that I have it working and can easily kill off most of my office vampires, I’m planning on buying two more for the other locations that have heavy wall wart populations.
I highly recommend this product. Amazon.com has the best deal on the base model at $34.99 and there are other models which you can see here. There are also UK/European and Australian power outlet versions I’ve found.
While we might disagree on climate change, saving money by reducing energy use is something I think we can all agree on.
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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!!
Wow … some of us would like to see some breakdown of your electric bill too, like the charge for “Public Purpose Programs” .
.
Where did you find the Australian versions – are they available from Amazon?
REPLY: here at Belkin’s Website:
http://www.belkin.com/au/IWCatProductPage.process?Product_Id=486412
Not sure if the come up in Amazon AU or not.
-Anthony
In Australia we use 110V to tickle horses. Always surprises me you Americans think it is power.
240V for Australia, where men are men and women… wal… they mostly just weep.
I reckon you could get a lousy hundred ten out of a windmill on your own roof…
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
Not any real need for change at the SF condo. Three people, four computers. All electric appliances. We normally are under baseline but it was a very cold August and the electric heaters got used a bit.
Charges07/09/2010 - 07/31/2010
Electric Charges $53.39
Baseline Quantity 255.30000 Kwh
Baseline Usage 255.30000 Kwh @ur momisugly $0.11877
101-130% of Baseline 76.59000 Kwh @ur momisugly $0.13502
131-200% of Baseline 43.77667 Kwh @ur momisugly $0.29062
Net Charges $53.39
The net charges shown above include the following component(s).
Please see definitions on Page 2 of the bill.
Generation $22.14
Transmission 4.08
Distribution 17.62
Public Purpose Programs 4.59
Nuclear Decommissioning 0.10
DWR Bond Charge 1.93
Ongoing CTC 2.08
Energy Cost Recovery Amount 0.85
Taxes and Other
Energy Commission Tax $0.08
Charges
08/01/2010 - 08/10/2010
Electric Charges $23.20
Baseline Quantity 111.00000 Kwh
Baseline Usage 111.00000 Kwh @ur momisugly $0.11877
101-130% of Baseline 33.30000 Kwh @ur momisugly $0.13502
131-200% of Baseline 19.03333 Kwh @ur momisugly $0.29062
Net Charges $23.20
The net charges shown above include the following component(s).
Please see definitions on Page 2 of the bill.
Generation $9.58
Transmission 1.79
Distribution 7.67
Public Purpose Programs 2.00
Nuclear Decommissioning 0.05
DWR Bond Charge 0.84
Ongoing CTC 0.90
Energy Cost Recovery Amount 0.37
Taxes and Other
Energy Commission Tax $0.04
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.
Roger Carr says:
September 5, 2010 at 9:32 pm
In Australia we use 110V to tickle horses. Always surprises me you Americans think it is power.
240V for Australia, where men are men and women… wal… they mostly just weep.
I reckon you could get a lousy hundred ten out of a windmill on your own roof…
Heh….. half the volts…. double the current….. thicker wires…. more transmission loss…. twice as much copper required…..
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.
100W, 24 Hrs = 2.4KW… * $0.12/KWHr = $0.28.8 per day … *28 = $8.06.4 / month.
Excess heat is one thing, but the expense of a monitoring and control system, even with high priced kilowatts is marginal.
A public utility friend of mine says that the biggest ‘theoretically recoverable’ loss is from heating water (even in the cold water pipes) and sending it down the drain during cold months.
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.
Oh! Welcome Back!
Missed ya!
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.
Damned Skeptic says:
“It was around 35 which until I read this post I thought was a lot. I was surprised to see that 40 is typical.”
Ha. I’d be lucky to be able to count 40 actual things in my current place, let alone 40 plugged in things.
😉
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.
I think in a lot of places in the world nearly every outlet has it’s own switch. The first time I saw that (in Denmark), I was pretty shocked but it really makes sense. If the outlet has it’s own switch you really don’t need all these gizmos to stop the ‘power vampires’… unless of course you want the remote thingy. Not only that, certain appliances like George Foreman grills you have to unplug to turn off in the first place! With an outlet switch it’s be a cinch. I think it’s safer as well.
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.
I bought one of those Kill-O-Watt meters two years ago but never used it.
Thanks for your explanation on how it can help!
How long do you estimate these things take to pay for themselves?
Ok, now I dont feel bad about my high summer bills over +$400 /mo. I really dislike California.
In English that would be “Here are some features:” 😉
Good to hear things are back to normal for now.
And from this piece, the money line has got to be:
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.
@ur momisugly 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.
Anthony “Saves” Watts, Literally…
“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?