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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FWIW, some few years ago I got a ‘radio remote’ power control thingy at Target (for modestly cheap… I think it was about $15?). It’s a “brick on a rope” but the rope (or cord) is only about 6 inches. Plugs into wall. “Whatever” plugs into it ( I use generic power strips) and BINGO! Instant remote power kill on “Whatever”. IIRC, you get two remote “bricks” and the controller has two buttons on it, all in one package.
I got two of them, so have 4 total clusters that can be controlled. Living room Entertainment, Bedroom Entertainment, Office Computer, and Misc charging station.
Biggest issue is remembering to kill the entertainment stack in the bedroom when falling asleep… and remembering to leave it on when I have the recorder set to record something…
SIDEBAR: I once calculated that the Honda 12 KW Diesel generator had the interesting property that the cost of electricity in kW-hrs was the price of Diesel per gallon with the decimal shifted one position. So with Diesel at $3.12 per gallon, it makes electricity at 31 cents / kWhr. That’s less than the 40 cents you are being hit for, peak. FWIW, you could get that down another chunk by using ‘off road’ Diesel and dodging the taxes.
Unfortunately, Honda stopped selling that fine generator around here. I’m sure there are others available, though…
I’m sure the Powers That Be did not intend to make it profitable for everyone to run their own backyard Diesel for summer months… but they did…
Also worth a mention is the Capstone micro-turbine. At 30 kW it’s a bit large for individuals, but runs on natural gas (that is presently fairly cheap) and makes a lot of “waste heat”. Our local high school put one in, replacing their pool heater. It still heats the pool, but now they get 30 kW of electricity “for free”… Uses air bearings so it has no lube oil and no messy maintenance issues surrounding things like oil changes… Fascinating product. If you have money and a pool, it’s a great solution.
Finally, my 1 kW Honda gas generator runs about 8 hours on a quart of gasoline. Call it 8 hours on a buck. I make that 12 cents per hour. What I don’t know is how much load I had on it. But even it it dropped to 4 hours, that’s only 25 Cents / kWhr. You would still have a ways to go to get to 40 Cents… Might be worth a ‘full load test’ to see what it ran out to. You can also get Natural Gas versions that would cut the fuel costs way down. (No ‘road taxes’ and nat gas is running about $1.50 / gallon of gas equivalent right now). IIRC the 3 kW unit computed out to 25 Cents / kW-hr on gasoline last time I did the math and that dropped to 12 Cents on Natural Gas… Just saying… And while that does not amortize capital costs, I just assign those to having a standby generator anyway. Hey, it’s Quake Country… you gotta have one.
Yes, it’s a sad state of affairs when you can buy gasoline or Diesel retail and be competitive with PUC tariffs… Welcome to California.
Running small generators on propane or natgas should also clean up their exhaust a bit and extend service life of the unit, its lube and spark plug.
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. 🙂
Well it isn’t so much electric motors that the utility companies are concerned about these days; it is switching power supplies in computers adn other electronic equipment; and that includes all the small light weight non transformer battery chargers that are pluged into the line all the time.
In Europe; they have strict regulations regarding power factor; ans computer switching power supplies for Europe are required to have active power factor correction so they don’t look like a big capacitor to the power company.
And often it isn’t simply the Watts versus vA connection. Non Resistive power line loads can also have very high surge currents due to the non sinusoidal current waveform; so the utility company is concerned about the I^2R losses in the transmission lines as well as the lost metered power. At least the older electric power meters ; had magnetic sensing of both current and Voltage; so they were true instantaneous power responding; rahter than RMS corrected systems that actually sensed average power rather than instantaneous. The peaking factor can get pretty wild on some sorts of electrical gadgets.
A very neat way to run LEDs directly off the AC line (don’t try this at home); is to wire the LEDs in back to back parallel pairs, so that they conduct on alternate half cycles, and each LED acts as a reverse Voltage protection for its mate (LEDs are notorious for not having very well controlled reverse characteristics in high volume production. Well then having connected your LEDs into a (short) string af B2B pairs, you put a good mylar film capacitor in series with it and stick it straight across the AC line Voltage. Well you have to size the capacitor correctly using i = C dV/dt and dV/dt |max =2pif V peak.
Now the current is almost purely capacitive and not resistive; so if you light your whole house this way; the electric company will come and burn your house down. But hey; if you make up a Merry Christmas or Happy Gaiana day sign out of cheap LEDs they probably won’t notice. Well they’ve never complained about mine.
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. 🙂
Miscellaneous information on power use:
IIRC the big power user in a laser printer is the fuser (heater), which in recent designs is turned off automatically by some logic.
Another thing to check is that your scanner’s light is turning off automatically, usually a setting in software.
As for running a computer on 12vdc power, the version is spelled “l a p t o p” – with a DC wart (such as from Targus, or perhaps the computer maker like IBM/Lenovo – I use them frequently).
For multiple power cords, without switch, a solution is a quad wall outlet, wired in – suppliers like Leviton make ones that fit a normal double box. I read that some building codes now require them in hospitals (and they are available with the special grounding often needed there).
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.)