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Do you have vampires in your home?

Do you have vampires in your home?

We aren’t talking about Dracula, but we are talking about vampires. Energy vampires! Energy vampires don’t only come out at night. They’re sucking the electrical juice in your home 24/7, whether you know it or not. An energy vampire is any one of those myriad devices that remain on standby or in sleep mode most of the time, yet keep consuming electricity as long as they’re plugged in.

Many of these are small electronics like DVR and DVD players, laptop A/C adapters or printers. But their cumulative effect on your household energy efficiency can be large: As much as 20 percent of power used by home electronics is wasted on devices that are powered up but on standby. Cell phone battery chargers are particularly sneaky. Even when they’re not charging a battery, if they’re plugged into the wall, they’re drawing a trickle of electricity.  If you had a dripping faucet, you would turn it tighter to make sure it was all the way turned off and not wasting water, wouldn’t you?  Then don’t let electricity drip either.

Besides their little beady LED eyes, you can identify energy vampires by the way they plug into the wall.  “Wall warts” use a square transformer that plugs directly into the outlet. They normally convert AC to 9- or 12-volt DC to power low-voltage devices like answering machines, cordless phones and battery chargers. “Bricks” have a standard plug and AC cord leading to a heavier-duty rectangular transformer box midway in the cord. These are typically seen on laptop AC adapters. Here are a few ways to fight back against this slow, silent waste of electricity.

Completely power down computers and devices like printers instead of using standby or sleep mode. Even when you completely power down some electronics, unplugging them from the wall is the only way to prevent them from continuing to consume electricity. Use an on/off power strip to plug in as many energy vampires as possible. With one flip of the switch, cut them all off from the grid and reduce power consumption.

At Automatic Air, customer service is more than just words. It’s how we’ve stayed in business in Louisville, KY for over 30 years. Call us for more advice on cutting off the energy vampires in your home.

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