Vampire energy accounts for over a 100 billion kilowatt hours per year in the USA, and in Britain amounts to around 12% of domestic bills. Also known as standby power or phantom load, it is slowly being tackled at home by people who have to pay their own bills, but it is still horrendous in the workplace, in universities, schools, hospitals and other establishments.
That is a lot of climate-changing, polluting CO2 which could be tackled quite effectively, saving money too – £147 per year per household on average, according to British Gas.
There are two ways of tackling the issue: appliance by appliance, or looking at the big picture.
To check each appliance, you need to beg, borrow or steal a smart plug which displays the power usage as you use it. If you plug it in, and it shows a reading even though you’re not using it, that’s vampire energy.
Getting the big picture involves a three stage process of unplugging everything in the home for an extended period, taking meter readings, and accounting for fridge, freezer and broadband router energy usage too, so it’s more complicated. This is definitely worth doing if you suspect your energy bills are too high, but you may just find out you have a lousy fridge.
Source and Useful Links
This idea comes from one of our newsletter readers, Sylvie, with extra details from an article on Wired.
Here’s an all-round look at the subject from Which?.
And the BBC.
