Twilight for the Energy Vampires
Energy and Eco-bloggers are taking advantage of the Halloweekend to talk about energy vampires – the always-on parasites like phone chargers and dvd players that slowly, silently leech electricity from the outlet and money from your wallet.
I was going to avoid the whole discussion until Christmas when it would take on a proper level of irony, but my plans were changed when I logged into iGoogle and spotted my PowerMeter gadget.
You’ll notice that the bars have smoothed a bit, compared to previous versions. But more importantly, you’ll see a darkened bar running along the bottom at about 300 watts. That bar means I’ve got a vampire infestation!
Like some communicable disease, you never think vampires will happen to you. You keep clean, always turn off the TV, and put the computer on a power strip. But there’s no denying it, my TED5000 display never drops below about 270 watts, meaning I’ve got something in the house that needs a constant power infusion. I feel so dirty!
Below the new baseline bar, PowerMeter tells me I used about 8.3 kWh for vampire energy on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. It’s interesting to see that it’s very similar most days, even though my power consumption profile looks so different.
Now, 8.3 kWh may not sound like much, but that’s $0.66 per day, or about $20 a month and $240 a year. My internet costs $20 a month – why should I pay the same amount for something with little to no value for me?
It looks like I’ll be vampire hunting this weekend. Happy Halloween!
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