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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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.
Anthony, good your back. But you guys in California are so behind the times, I’ve been using these devices (in Scotland) for nearly 2 years now. More for convenience than power saving though – in cold countries stand-by power is not an issue – as long as you have a well insulated house – the excess heat from standby devices just helps keep the house slightly warmer (so your central heating doesn’t need to come on so much). The other device I have is the power strip which detects when the main device (e.g TV or Desktop pc) is not on and cuts the power to all the peripherals. Another energy saving idea for you – I have just installed 4 new external lights with IR sensors (so they only come on when you walk past); but the IR sensors draw about 3W each, and are on 24/7 so if you have a few of these lights around the house/out buildings, this adds up.
So I now plan to install an external Photovoltaic sensor upstream in the lighting circuit, hence the IR sensors will not be drawing power during daylight hours (which are very long in the summer months).
For those in the UK, the standby power saving devices are available from Maplin:
http://www.maplin.co.uk/Search.aspx?MenuNo=95171
Thanks for the Aussie link.
We are getting gouged at $150 to $180, so that is off my Christmas list!
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
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.
gallopingcamel says:
September 5, 2010 at 10:30 pm
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.
=========================
I hear you man:) I just have to deal with 3phase step down transformers a lot as part of my job and it’s a PITA. a) the transformer and b) the extra copper we have to load into trucks every week:) though I do get a lot of questions as to why the 100A 110V service has only a 63A breaker on it at the primary end….lol (we also have to deal with synchronous motors that are designed for 60Hz operation….. think musical instruments:) )
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.
In the UK, one utility company – Southern Electric – provides free of charge a smart meter add on, that gives a read out of kW and Watts of power drawn as well as the cost per month. I now always unplug the TV and satellite box from the wall at night – it’s surprising how warm the satellite box actually gets. I am sceptical that a pc would actually draw power after it shuts down, even if still plugged into the wall.
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.
Welcome “home” Mr Watts! Now, “It’s a Wonderful Life”, that is one dabba-doozey of a film! Never watch it without a tear in my eye when Clarence gets his Angel First Class (AFC) wings!
In the meantime, all you mining geologists out there keep digging for those dilithium crystals, we here in the UK need them fast! (The Government’s lost our originals).
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.
At 40 cents/kWh, the cost of electricity off grid is close to that which could produce yourself using a reasonable diesel generator.
Diesel fuel retails at (near enough) USD$1/kg. Diesel engines consume about 240g /kWh (small ones). Say 24c/kWh on fuel costs.
A cheap (“consumable”) generator costs USD$1,200 for a 6kW unit. Assuming that it lasts a year of running it an average of 6 hours a day to supply an average of 3kW runs at about 18 cents a kWh on generator costs.
If you get serious about using generating your own power, choose a larger, liquid-cooled unit. Liquid-cooling facilitates easily increasing the amount of energy harvested from the fuel burnt while generating electricity, by e.g. pre-heating hot water via a heat exchanger using the engine coolant. Nett efficiency can be greater than 50% without resorting to “high-tech”.
In an area that needs more cooling than heating, one can drive the cooling units directly from the diesel engine, circumventing conversion losses. One can still use the engine’s cooling circuit to heat an insulated thermal reservoir of water for premises heating at night.
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 post Anthony, and one that I will be following up in a big way.
I work for a very large finance company, with tens of thousands of staff who work from home, I reckon I should be able to persuade my employer to provide one of these with the “home workers” installation kit, it will be a marginal cost comparitively, and it does what it says on the tin!
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.
In New Zealand many years ago, I had my domestic power cut off by the local council of a small provincial city, a one-stop civic shop, by removing the pole fuse out at the street from my home for for being very late paying the mandatory annual licence fee for my dog, some twelve months after the death of the dog and notification of same to the local authority! Being on first-name terms with the then Mayor enabled me to get the matter sorted quickly, but the Mayor, also my lawyer, was initially quite annoyed by me interrupting a dinner party at his home, but quickly expedited the replacement of the pole fuse when he understood my problem.
Local bodies everywhere have always been keen to extract maximum dollars for minimum services, but the most rapacious charge I was ever forced to make (in a different and rural area of New Zealand) was a ‘non-connection fee’ imposed for non-use of the public water reticulation system and using rainwater off my roof instead. This REALLY annoyed all of us residents as no public water reticulation was available in the area!
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!
Walter Schneider asked:
I never said that. I expect we will solve many of the energy challenges we now face. And I suspect what supplants humanity will benefit from this.
The only thing that boggled my mind was your energy price per unit. 11 $cents! Wow. I pay 6 $cents in france. Almost half. The earn the price of the gadget back would take me years and anyway i have an automatic energysaver. My wife has a thing about things running unattended, so if i turn my back for a moment she switches it (tv, radio, stereo, dvd, pc) off.
Way better then a gadget, but admittedly more irritating since you can’t switch it off.
I wonder how long it will be before they start charging you more and more for all the food you eat, water you drink, and power you use, etc., when you start living longer than the population average. This is a very bad precedent — the correct solution for California’s power problems is to build more power stations (and turn off all the streetlights overnight).
Mr. Watts said:
—————————————————————————————–
My computer workstation where I manage WUWT and research
My wife’s computer workstation with central printer
—————————————————————————————–
I think you could save a lot of power going laptops instead of workstations, laptops are made to save power – and with the battery’s included, you don’t really need a UPS
My yearly power consumption is around 2400kwh ($ 800)
” Les Francis says:
September 6, 2010 at 12:20 am
Putting two phases of 115v together does not give you 230 volts.”
Yes, it does, if the phase displacement is Pi/2 (=180°), which it is in the US. If you have 3-phase power as in Europe, displacement is Pi/3 (=120°), so 230V+230V=400V (one has to use the sine-functions, of course).
A European coffee or raclette machine works fine on US 220V (and 60 Hz).
I know of no statistic that proves that 120V is more or less secure than 230V. But when Europe changed from 110V to 220V about 50 years ago, people did not have as many appliances as today, so it could be done for a reasonable price. The US has missed that train, therefore they are stuck with their ridiculously thick dryer-cables, and their flimsy 110V-plugs.
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.
” 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 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….