Bach Seat

Vampire power, aka standby power, phantom power, wall warts, standby loss, idle current, phantom power, ghost load, and vampire load is costing businesses and consumers billions annually. The term vampire power refers to the electricity many devices and appliances waste just by being plugged in (even if they’re switched off). Due to poor design or short-term manufacturer cost-cutting these devices draw power all the time.

According to Grinning Planet, an Australian study of global standby power usage in electronic devices estimated that electronics manufacturers could cut vampire power by 30% immediately just by using existing, better technologies-and with minimal additional cost to consumers. Tree Hugger cites a study from Future Forests, which says only 5% of the power drawn by cell phone chargers is actually used to charge phones. The other 95% is wasted when there is no phone in the charger to charge.

Grinning Planet also cites a recent survey on vampire power that in the United States, 5% of electricity usage is due to standby power. In Europe, the numbers run slightly higher: France at 7% and Germany and the Netherlands at 10% each. Australia comes in at 11%, Japan at 12%.

According to UC-Berkley, the US consumes 26% of the world’s energy.  Of that energy, about 5% is vampire power. USAToday puts that in perspective, that’s between 200 and 400 terawatt-hours — roughly as much electricity as the entire country of Italy consumes in a year. The Energy Information Administration says that in the United States alone, vampire power costs consumers more than $3 billion a year.

All this energy use enacts a hefty toll on the environment. Coal-burning power plants produce carbon dioxide, a leading cause of global climate change. Therefore, less vampire power translates to lower carbon emissions.

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As a beginning, I have installed Edison by Verdiem. Verdiem is a Seattle WA based start-up. The Edison software reportedly doesn’t completely shut the computer off but rather moves it to a “suspend” state, which uses less energy. Users can also schedule to shut down the screen and hard drive before going into suspend mode.

We’ll see what issues result from the installation of this software and the various states it can induce on my WinXP test box. In future updates, I will also try out physical devices such as:

• Watt Stopper/Legrand’s Isolé plug load controller
• Power-Saving Essential SurgeArrest 7 from APC

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.