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.
Sponsored IT training links:
Up to date 642-975 prep tools including E20-001 dumps and 156-215.70 practice test so you will pass real test on first try guaranteed.
Here is an alternative to the power board with remote: a power board that automatically switches of ancillaries when the main device is put into standby mode. http://www.rkcable.com.au/CrestEarthSmart.htm
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.”
I would tread lightly here sport; you don’t know us, you don’t know our history, you don’t know our backgrounds, you don’t know what we’ve seen or where we’ve been … likely as not, we have tread on the same ground ahead of you more than just once … collectively anyway … shoot, on second thought, we have designed, built, invented, constructed and erected some, no, most if not all of the ‘ground’ you’re currently ‘using’ …
.
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
addendum, for lights and small things voltage is split at the circuit panel from 250v ac to 125v ac, all large items ie stove, dryer , heat, A.C. ,jacuzzi, hot tub, water heater etc all are 250v ac
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.
David Onkels says:
September 6, 2010 at 4:07 pm
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
why not use 1 watt LED bulbs instead of 11w mercury vapor lights?
“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)
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.
” 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.
Jim,
Where I come from, arguments such as yours, which boil down to, “I’m intelligent and educated, while you are ignorant and stupid,” don’t fly. Why don’t you attempt to refute my argument?
Tim L,
“why not use 1 watt LED bulbs instead of 11w mercury vapor lights?”
We don’t do that because we’re careful with the members’ money. It takes a 6-watt, or, really, a 10-watt LED lamp to replace that 11-watt CFL lamp, in order to approximate the light output. The LED lamp will usualy have a rated life of, perhaps, 20,000 or 30,000 hours (Certainly not the 50,000 hours you see commonly stated), and will cost $36 or so, although the cost is coming down. The CFL lamp presently costs about $2, although they are occasionally available free from the local power company. They have a rated life of 10,000 hours, which is conservative in our experience. Lamp replacement is done on a volunteer basis by members.
LED lamps show great potential, but are not presently economically feasible for our application.
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.
I did some calculations and found some interesting results:
In some parts of the country, the electricity is tiered. That is, you pay very little per KWh for the Baseline amount, but as you go beyond that amount, the rate per KWh gets higher and higher.
In my house, we rarely go above tier 2, so I had no idea what the price was at the upper levels. However, when I saw this bill, it became clear that the higher levels can be very expensive.
Tier 1 (Baseline) = 11.877 cents per KWh
Tier 2 = 13.502 cents per KWh
Tier 3 = 29.062 cents per KWh
Tier 4 = 40.029 cents per KWh
Tier 5 = 40.029 cents per KWh
In my case, very little of my energy goes into Tier 2, so the cost saving from solar would be minimal. However, in the case of this person’s bill, the usage goes into the highest tier and the any solar electric would have a major drop on the bill.
If I use the current average for a large installed array of $7.60 per watt and we’ll assume he gets an average of 5.5 peak solar hours per day (2007.5 per year). One watt would produce 2.007 KWh per year. Because it would reduce at the higher end or 40.029 cents per KWh, that comes to a savings of 2.007 x 40.029 cents per KWh = about 80 cents savings per year.
http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/pubs/redbook/
$7.60 (per installed watt) / $0.80 savings per year = about 9.5 years to payback. Figure that the life of the system would be around 25 to 30 years. In this person’s case, going solar would prove to be cost effective.
The catch here is that I’m only seeing the summertime bill. IF this person is below Tier 4 in the other months, this will not produce as quick a savings.
Bob Diaz
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.
Sorry to be late to the party, but this device might be named as “Watts Down with This”.
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.
Indeed; disassembly of a typical long-suffering and overlooked (until it fails!) “muffin fan” here in the home lab last night revealed a ‘split’ stator and what may be a turn or two (a shorted turn) around the smaller pole piece … hallmarks of a shaded pole motor. Since there is precious little ‘on the web’ regarding the makeup and design on these “inside-out motor design[s] for airmovers” (as the history for the Rotron website puts it) I selected a suitable, ailing specimen (missing a retainer clip for some reason) for closer examination …
But don’t kid yourself, the ubiquitous ‘muffin’ fans still enjoy a place in the equipment designers toolkit, albeit a more infrequent choice as time progresses. BTW, I have yet to see a “brushed” DC fan in equipment, in part, no doubt, for a couple or reasons one being EMI/RFI issues due to ‘brush arcing’ (any car heater or A/C will easliy demonstrate this phenom using a hand-held AM radio in proximity).
As to the 60’s and “electronic equipment normally came in “relay racks” two feet wide by two and a half deep by anything up to seven feet tall,” some of us still ‘deal’ in racks of gear of that magnitude; the nameplate is often Agilent, Rhode&Schwarz and National Instruments and the ‘racks’ into which trey are mounted (along with some ancillary support gear) require ‘venting’ (air cooling) of said tall racks of gear … and this is 2010 for the record …
Ric: “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. ”
I’ve a little EG&G marked unit from 1984 that ‘counters’ that descrip; the outside of the rotor appears to be a series of magnets (there are a series of NS poles present) and the stator is comprised of a singular pole-piece with a coil, this in one corner of the little square fan’s frame … there is also a Hall-effect device about 1/4 circumference away from the coil/pole-piece.
The normal ‘parked’ position of the rotor is ‘parked’ attracted to the single pole-piece … I theorize the Hall effect detects the ‘position’ of the rotor from the mag field and actuates the coil for attraction/repulsion as required … this does not appear to be a polyphase AC motor but it gets the job done … I’m going to have to look more closely at more recent PC class fans and ascertain their technology as well …
.
Pls, get over yourself; frankly, I have better things to do with my time. As I said before, you don’t know us, you don’t know where we’ve been or what we’ve done …
.
“Pls, get over yourself;”
Indeed!
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 ;^)
Well Efficiency is my middle name and I don’t leave any of that computer stuff on. Both at home and in my office, my computer is turned off unless I am using it; which is pretty much ten hours a day at work; but the display goes off via a power Nag if I leave my office; well it’s worse than that. The sensor is on the edge of the desk looking over the keyboard, and If I am not typing, it shits the display off. sometimes, I am so stealthy working with the mouse; which is right under the damn motion sensor; it doesn’t see me mousing; so it shuts off the display.
I have noticed recently that PG&E, our local utility announces that it is saving energy by simply telling us to use less; so its future green energy plan is for us to use no energy. Yes that is really helpful.
Just how bleak is the California future energy outlook can be discerned from an article in the paper last weekend about the coming electric cars. California is already way behind schedule in meeting the green legislated electric car change over.
So if you go out and buy one of those soon to be in your neighborhood electric wonder cars; you have to ahve a “Charging Station” in your garage; for which you need to get a building permit. This is a retirement program for building inspectors; they are going to get filthy rich inspecting all the garage electric car “charging Stations.”
Hey I already have charging stations all over my house. My camera battery chargers are often plugged into them (but not always) They come in 115 Volt sizes at 15 Amps per circuit, or in newer houses at up to 20 Amps with the right cable plug. So what’s with this permit BS. Well if you try to charge your all electric wunderkar from the 115, it takes eight hours to charge so you can go 30 miles round trip to the store. So you need 240 Volts to get the charging time between store trips down to 4 hours. Hey I already have a 240 Volt charging station in my garage; sometimes the dryer is plugged into it; I could plug my electric car into that; so what’s with this charging station BS. They say you have to tell your electric utility company that you are getting an electric car; and they will come out and look at all the trash in your garage. What the hey for; it’s none of their business if I buy an electric car.
Typical houses these days come with a main breaker box good for 240 Volt at 200 Amps; so why does my electric car; which charges off a 40 Amp breaker on 240, need a permit ?
Well here’s the rub. When you tell your electric utility that you are getting an electric perambulator; they send a team out to check the pole transformer near your house; to make sure you don’t blow all your neighbors off the grid, when you plug your electric car in at night.
Are you getting the picture; that California doesn’t have anywhere near enough electric supply capacity to handle any number of all electric cars. We already buy most of our electricity out of State from places like Texas; that have some energy foresight.
In some posh places like the Hollywood elites where everbody has to be seen to be green; they all have electrics; so you can imagine the headaches that SoCal Edison has down there in lala land.
So you house may be wired for 50KW of electricity; but don’t you believe that PG&E can actually supply you more than a small fraction of that.
So much for an all electric future ! But at 10% solar conversion efficiency; you only need 500 squ metres or 5000 squ feet; whichever comes first; to completely cut yourself off from the grid and go totally free clean green renewable energy; at least during some part of the day. But there’s that permiyt thing; the building inspector would like to retire; so he’s not going to ok your do it yourself free energy scheme.
I may buy an electric train set for my old age; but forget that electric car boondoggle. Did I read that one of those overpriced Tesla Motors cars has something like 3000 C cells in it. Does anybody else think a C cell is an efficient energy packaging container ?
“ … 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.
Alexej Buergin says:
That’s all I said: Watts equal Volts X Amps. But thanks for the interesting comments.
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 🙂
Here in the SF Bay area, many libraries have Kill a Watt devices available for checking out. Check your area library. Hang in there pal.