Vampire Power Reality Check: What Tech Gear Sucks the Most?

We break down what tech gear costs you the most on your electric bill even when it's not actively being used.

By Zohra Ashpari
Thu, February 02, 2012

Bloodthirsty vampires are as fake as the fangs on Robert Pattinson's character in The Twilight Saga, but real vampire power hogs lurk in your home and should make you nervous. If your house is typical, you have dozens of electronic gadgets and other gear sucking up energy unnecessarily, resulting in surprisingly high electricity costs.

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Vampire power is industry parlance for standby power consumed by electronics-- such as DVRs, cable modems, or a subwoofer--while they are switched off or not in use. A typical home has as many as 40 devices constantly drawing such standby power, amounting to 5 to 10 percent of residential electricity use, according to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Here is a look at the tech world's worst offenders and their monthly costs (which can be increased by bad habits). I based cost by multiplying the national average cost of electricity per kilowatt-hour with the average standby energy consumption of each device. Energy figures are derived from a Lawrence Berkeley National Lab study.

Six Worst Offenders

Desktop

You leave your desktop on all the time. A desktop in idle mode consumes nearly the same amount of energy as it does in active mode because its memory, disc, and processor are all still running.

(Vampire cost: $7 month)

Game Consoles

You never turn off your game console after play. Game consoles are like specialized PCs with the same type of components inside. Leaving your game console on is comparable to leaving your computer on.

(Vampire cost: $6 month)

Plasma or LCD TV

Plasma TVs are the most culpable when it comes to vampire power sucking. They consume about two times more energy than LCDs.

(Vampire cost: $5 per month)Cable (or Satellite) Box with HD DVR

Your DVR--when not recording--still chugs large amounts of energy.

(Vampire cost: $3 per month)

Laptop

If your laptop has a screensaver with images, it consumes more power than an idle laptop.

(Vampire cost: $1.50 month)

VCR/DVD Player

You forget to turn off your DVD player after watching a film, and it stays on the Menu page for days. Your DVD player never rests when left on the Menu constantly reading material on the disc.

(Vampire cost: $1 month)

Take a Bite Out of Energy Waste

Although individually each of these devices doesn't amount to a huge expenditure, all your household devices together can gobble between $100 and $160 per year in electricity. The U.S. Department of Energy says that $4 billion a year in electricity bills is wasted because of vampire power sucking.

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Originally published on www.pcworld.com. Click here to read the original story.

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