Always-on devices are burning up $165 worth of electricity a year in the average home.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Imagine spending $165 a year -- on nothing.
The average U.S. home now contains so many "always-on" devices and appliances consuming power night and day, even when turned off, that altogether they manage to put that big of a nick in the typical family budget.
A just-released report co-authored by the Natural Resources Defense Council, a Stanford University lab and efficiency consultant Home Energy Analytics estimates that these devices consume as much as 23 percent of all the electricity used annually in many homes.
In the typical American home, the total "load" or demand created by these devices and appliances amounts to 164 watts day and night, on average.
"To put it another way, having 164 watts always on is the same as brewing 234 cups of coffee every single day for a year, which is more than 85,000 cups of coffee," the report noted.
Attack of the vampires:
That's what the report's authors call these otherwise idle devices that are doing nothing except staying electrically hot.
"Devices that contribute to a home's idle Load are often referred to as 'vampires' for two reasons: they suck energy around the clock, and they are often invisible to us," the report notes.
Here's an overview on the usual vampires in your home that are sucking power and draining your wallet.
- Computers and monitors, televisions, television speaker bars, DVRs, game consoles and chargers of all sorts.
- Door bells, some thermostats and ground-fault plugs.
- New appliances manufactured to be part of the "Internet of Things," including dishwashers, clothes washers and even LED light bulbs that you can control remotely with a smartphone. All of them include controls that are sucking down power whether or not you are using them.
- Other innocent looking suspects include heated bathroom floors, heated towel racks, hot water recirculation pumps and coffee makers that keep water hot all the time.
Collectively, these convenience devices are costing Americans about $19 billion a year, the study estimates, and using the amount of electricity produced by 25 power plants the size of FirstEnergy's Davis-Besse nuclear power plant, or 50 medium-sized coal- or gas-fired power plants, pumping up to 40 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually.
The NRDC intends to lobby for regulations that would require manufacturers to make devices that truly are off when you turn them off.
"Ultimately, manufacturers should design all products with the goal of minimizing idle power so that consumers don't have to worry about idle energy waste and can purchase any device trusting that it will work efficiently, just as they believe minimum safety standards for other products, like vehicles, will protect them," he report recommends.
What to do now?
"A great deal of idle-load energy can be saved through no-cost or low-cost actions by motivated consumers, once they are informed about how energy and money are being needlessly wasted," the report notes.
Here are a few suggestions:
- Identify devices in your home that are always on even when unused and unplug those that are rarely used.
- Plug others in to power strips and timers, or "smart outlets," so that they draw power only when needed.
- Plug some devices such as instant hot coffee makers, hot water recirculation pumps and heated towel racks into into heavy-duty timers so that they will operate only during normal times of use.
- Check your owners manual. Some electronic devices can be adjusted so they automatically power down when not in use.