{"id":365,"date":"2009-03-22T14:07:56","date_gmt":"2009-03-22T18:07:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rbachnet.wwwmi3-ss40.a2hosted.com\/?p=365"},"modified":"2022-12-30T12:09:42","modified_gmt":"2022-12-30T17:09:42","slug":"365","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rbach.net\/index.php\/365\/","title":{"rendered":"Vampire Power Draining Budgets"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

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

Grinning Planet<\/em> also cites a recent survey<\/a> 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%.<\/p>\n

According to UC-Berkley<\/a>, the US consumes<\/strong> 26% of the world’s energy.\u00a0 Of that energy, about 5% is vampire power<\/strong>. USAToday<\/a><\/em> puts that in perspective, that’s between 200 and 400 terawatt-hours — roughly as much electricity as the entire country of Italy<\/strong> consumes in a year. The Energy Information Administration<\/a> says that in the United States alone, vampire power costs consumers more than $3 billion a year.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

rb-<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

As a beginning, I have installed Edison by Verdiem<\/a>. 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.<\/em><\/p>\n

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:
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