Standby Power facts

Threatening that the planet is dying, or promising wealth from home energy savings is not working. So how will we be motivated to save energy, particularly when saving energy requires us to pay attention and change behavior.

The answer is education, the only solution to achieving any long term change. But to be educated we need motivation, re-enter the temptation for threats and rewards!

I have a question? Why are we so hard to teach on simple energy savings opportunities, like standby power and power factor? And why are we so easily influenced by marketing hype?

What I used to know as standby electricity (boring) grew into phantom power (sort of boring) and is now vampire power (exciting). We learn that it "sucks" 5% (frightening) of our household energy (not true) unless we buy a smart strip (the vampire buster) and save oodles (money)

Standby power and vampire power are an area for energy savings and we should all be informed and make the savings possible. But please do not let wild product claims influence you. Smart strips do not save energy in most cases; they are costly, they require large amounts of energy to be manufactured, and they consume 1.9 Watts of energy to do little useful at all.

To add insult to injury, they distract us from the real issue which is to change our attitude. What is needed is education, and then motivation to turn devices off, unplu where necessary, and buy replacement products wisely.

Please read our article on vampire energy and standby energy in which we discuss the effectiveness of smart power strips.