Wasting watts with idle gadgets

Phantom electricity boosts utility bill, carbon emissions

By peter korn

Pamplin Media Group, Mar 11, 2010

The KILL A WATT plug-in device measures phantom energy so you know where to start conserving electricity.

L.E. BASKOW / Pamplin Media Group

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Everybody needs a bedtime routine, and I’ve got a new one – chasing phantoms.

In this case, the phantoms are the sources of “phantom electricity” being used by appliances around our house when they’re not in use. Think about all those tiny green and red standby lights and digital displays that keep your home from becoming fully dark after you’ve turned off the lights at night.

They’re using energy. They’re increasing your home’s carbon footprint. And they’re costing you money.

Phantom, or standby electricity usage, is an unintended byproduct of our reliance on electronics. As electronic gadgets proliferate, so does the waste of energy.

Alan Meier, a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., has led the way in identifying standby usage and in pushing for solutions. Meier estimates homes expend 5 to 8 percent of their electricity on standby power, and sometimes as much as 15 percent.

Twenty years ago, there were fewer electronic gadgets, and those that were available came with on/off switches. Off really meant off.

Today, the average house has at least 50 appliances that plug into an outlet and use standby power, Meier says.

Garage door openers need standby power so they’re always ready to respond. Microwave ovens draw standby power for their clocks and timers. Cell phone chargers left in sockets when they’re not in use draw phantom power.

Do-it-yourself testing

All that is what led me to purchase a $21 Kill A Watt phantom chaser, otherwise known as an electricity usage monitor. To get a reading on how much energy our house wastes (and what it’s costing us), all I had to do was plug the palm-sized Kill A Watt into a wall outlet and plug a standby appliance or charger into the Kill A Watt.

The kitchen came first. That bread maker that we keep plugged in, even though we haven’t baked bread in months? A steady draw of four watts. Dustbuster? Should be used more often, judging by the dust balls in the corners of the living room. It’s always plugged in, and always drawing four watts.

The bathroom night light is costing us three watts, and the electric toothbrush another three watts.

Next I braved my teenage son’s bedroom to use the Kill A Watt on the surge protector, where his stereo equipment and iPod charger are permanently plugged in. The phantom draw there was a whopping 13 watts.

Worst offender

But the really big energy waster in our home I saved for last. According to Meier, by far the worst draw of phantom energy is what he calls the set top box, the box that converts either satellite or cable signals for television watching.

A standard converter continually uses up to 15 to 25 watts, depending on the model. Boxes that utilize hard drives for digital video recording can draw as much as 45 watts when not in use (and a great deal more when they are).

How bad is that?

“It’s like adding a new refrigerator to your home, or it’s the secret 13th month of your cable bill,” Meier says.

We don’t TiVo, but we do draw 25 standby watts from the outlet that services our television, video recorder, satellite box, computer and printer.

Calculating how much all this phantom energy costs isn’t as complicated. Portland General Electric charges us about 10 cents for a kilowatt hour of electricity, or the amount of energy a 1,000-watt device consumes in an hour, says Dave Brook, energy consultant with the Oregon Department of Energy.

The latest research shows that standby energy use is about 100 watts per home. Multiply those 100 watts per the 24 hours in a day and I have 2,400 watts of wasted energy each day, or 876,000 wasted watts a year.

That means I’m paying almost $88 for phantom electricity each year. Not pocket change, and certainly not insignificant in terms of carbon footprint when multiplied by every home in the country.

Hard to shave watts

As bedeviling as phantom energy might be, Brook says, it’s a small amount of waste compared to inefficient hot water heaters or poorly insulated houses. And it’s harder to eliminate. At best, experts say, a conscientious homeowner can cut phantom electricity usage by about 30 percent.

Some appliances, such as computers, can be run through power strips with an on/off switch. The voluntary Energy Star program will soon include standards and ratings for standby power use, hoping to encourage manufacturers to build more efficient standby modes.

Some appliances can simply be unplugged when you aren’t using them, such as that television set in the guest bedroom. Smart power strips that cost $20 to $100 automatically cut off power supply to devices that don’t need to be on standby, while maintaining power to those that do. But any appliance that has a clock, timer, memory or remote probably needs to stay plugged in.