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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I was going to mention, in addition to the wall-warts which are always on, most houses have green led forests.
Human eyes are most sensitive to green light, so sleep is highly disturbed.
Turning the wall-warts off not only saves $$, but you sleep better.
You all know about blue leds at night, don’t you?
“Should all acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind!” 🙂
Glad to hear things went well.
inversesquare:
When I left the UK to live in the USA, I used to think like you do. As a member of both the IEE and IEEE, I can claim to understand the pros and cons of 115V vs. 230V.
In the UK, the local distribution uses a 3-phase delta power (~420 Volts phase to phase). Each home has access to one leg of the delta supply and to neutral. This has the disadvantage of ensuring that one leg of each power socket is at 230 Volts and the neutral is not grounded at the home.
In the USA there is usually a transformer within 500 feet of the home. The power panel in each home has a 115 Volt leg and another 115 Volt leg in anti-phase, plus a neutral that is grounded at the house power meter.
High power appliances such as cookers, heat pumps and tumbler dryers run off 230 Volts (leg to anti-leg) and everything else off 115 Volts (leg to neutral) . 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.
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
Electricity bills are becoming an insidiously popular place for dumping extraneous and unrelated fees — because the authorities know we have to pay them.
In my former house, the electricity bill included an ‘ambulance levy’ — to support the operations of the public ambulance fleet.
Laudable as an ambulance levy might be, I fear the worst — when politicians catch on to an irresistible wheeze like this, there’s no saying where it might end.
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.”
After seeing some of the CA electric rates:
Here’s to hydropower in the Great Pacific NW:
My local Electric Utility:
Monthly Service Charge: $40.00 per month
Demand Charge: $2.70 per kW
Kilowatt-hour Charge: $.0384 per kWh
(demand charge is for timed highest peak usage)
–OR–
They have a new option to omit the Demand Charge if you pay $.08 per kWh.
@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.
Here’s Coolerado:
http://www.coolerado.com
One source of 12V DC:
http://www.solarpanelsplus.com/dc-air-conditioning/
I’ve used reflectix and an insulating blanket on my water heater, and turned the temp down as low as I could stand.
The extra fridge in the garage was a hog too…
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.
FOOTNOTE on low-cost home cooling; PROVIDED:
[a]… You live in an area where relatively humidity is usually fairly low; i.e.:
Do NOT try this in the southest U.S.; AND:
[b]… You can spare a continuous trickle of water:
I still like modern versions of old-fashioned swamp coolers:
Simple; reliable; they still do the job; use less power than A/C.
The one on our building keeps it cool even when it’s 95 degrees F. outside.
( 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 am amazed if not bemused: and probably ready to go into a home for the bewildered.
A few watts well whats that? you buy your power by the kilowatt. And it ought to be fairly cheap. Here I pay flat rate at 10p, say 15 US cents, day or night per KWh and in any quantity I choose up to my maximum supply rating which is 30 kilowatts. I never get anywhere that: maybe 15 Kw max with the oven and hob working along with my electric ‘coal’ fires not to mention the aircon etc.
So where is the problem?
Kindest Regards
In My Life and Hard Times (1933), James Thurber tells of his grandmother’s “groundless fears,” including “….the horrible suspicion that electricity was dripping invisibly all over the house….”.
He illustrated it with a drawing of a woman staring anxiously at an empty socket in a chandelier.
Another solution has been available for years – X10
Get one wireless transmitter ($20 for 4) and several wireless receivers ($13). Don’t get receivers that work through electrical wires, your computer may cause them to fail. (I have a lot of these. Only the “wireless” relays are reliable.)
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.
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.)
Gnomish says:
September 5, 2010 at 9:46 pm
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.
In winter, we leave the bathwater to go cold before emptying it down the drain.
Check the efficency of your fridge. We saved £10/month replacing an old one. We don’t have a freezer, preferring the fresh food we grow, and using simple preserving methods. We are blessed with deep cool cellars though, one of the reasons I bought my house, along with the south facing aspect.
Heating is the expensive thing here rather than cooling, so I have fitted and efficient Morso woodburning stove and backboiler.
energy bill was $620.16
omg! that’s the same as 3 months cost in winter here.
Christopher Hanley says: (September 5, 2010 at 11:02 pm) In My Life and Hard Times (1933), James Thurber tells of his grandmother’s “groundless fears,” including “….the horrible suspicion that electricity was dripping invisibly all over the house….”.
Add my great grandmother, Christopher.
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.
I am on oxegen 24/7 an my electric bill has gone from $ 107 to $172 in a month! it has been extremly hot but I am just curious as to how many watts my oxygen actually uses? I have portable tanks and can use that an would use less electric. I am interested in the item that you are using and am just needing some feedback!
Thank you!
Chris
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.
Great Anthony,
I’m still doing exercise every night killing the energy suckers here at home. But sometimes I just don’t want to bend down, so your idea is great!
I just love to go around catching these watts. Now that I think I’ve caught most of them, I’m moving into phase 2: getting them to get better used. I’ve started researching on how to use less power on my computer, disabling not needed hardware and establishing energy saving parameters. Vacuuming the computer seems to have had very good results in my case. I’ve also started researching how to put the food correctly in the fridge, after discovering there was peer-reviewed stuff on the issue… Very “cool”.
Ecotretas
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.
A couple of observations.
Putting two phases of 115v together does not give you 230 volts.
The U.K. requires fuses in higher voltage output plug leads.
The antipodes requires switches on all power outlets.
There are very good technical reasons for using 230, 240 volts. i can only think that 110 – 115volt systems are handovers fronn days gone buy and it will cost too much to convert up.
In Australia, the power companies were very careful measuring the loads on each phase for residential consumption. What has started to screw this up is the government allowing all those people with solar panel power being allowed to filter their dirty unbalanced power back into the mains systems.
In Australia the utility suppliers no longer rely on the amount consumption of their product to fill their bills. There are all sorts of service charges. miscellaneous charges etc that add up to more than the consumption.
Our water utilities charge you once for using the water and then again for flushing it down the drain. Then there are parks charges, one off service charges, meter reading charges, etc, etc, etc