Energy Vampires

Energy Vampires

I recently read an article about how most homes and businesses waste electricity every day.  The reporter was referring to the plethora of gadgets and devices that have become necessities in our digital age.  The article did a good job of identifying many devices that are energy vampires, but was short on advice to curtail this wasteful situation.  I had to chuckle as one of the few suggestions was to unplug your alarm clock.  I hardly consider using an electric clock an indication of being a spendthrift or energy waster.   There are several things you can do in order to cut down on hidden energy use and still be on time for work each day.

Take a cursory look around your house.  I bet you can find a dozen or more small power supplies plugged into outlets.  The cell phone or iPod charger, the telephone answering machine, the wireless telephone hand set, the electric screw drive charger and stove timer, all consume small amounts of electricity.  When you add them up and figure that most other houses on your street, in your town and in your state all have many of the same appliances, the amount of electricity being used is significant.

It is not practical to turn off some of these devices since doing so may cause memory loss and the need to re-program them.  For those of you without teenagers this can take hours.   In other cases, just unplugging chargers when not in use is a good start.

You can plug all the chargers into a power strip and when not using them you can turn the strip off.   If you are a bit forgetful, the power strip can be connected to a timer.  However, even the timer will use power but not as much as several chargers.

Here are a few other tips:

-         If you are going away for three or more days, turn off your hot water heater.

-         Put motion sensors on lights in hallways, garages etc.

-         Use only the amount of light you need for the task at hand.

-         Open those windows and use a fan instead of A/C.

-         And of course the obvious, use CFLs or LED lamps wherever possible.

The bottom line is that energy conservation is a cumulative thing.  If everyone does a few things, the impact can be significant.