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It’s not uncommon these days to find cordless phones, TV’s, DVR’s, security systems, automated coffee machines and much, much more in all of our houses. When you look around the house, there are a lot of every day things that use copious amounts of electricity. So, just how much electricity are these devices really using, even when they are supposedly turned “off”?

The electricity used by these devices is called standby power or vampire power because it sucks electricity without most people even knowing it.

Then there are power adapters which are even more deceiving. Ever leave your laptop power adapter plugged into the wall even when the laptop isn’t connected to it? How about Ipod speakers? Cell phone chargers? Computer speakers? Laptop charger? All these things have transformers, or power bricks, that take the 120 volts AC coming out of the wall outlet and step it down to about 12 volts DC. The funny thing is, you don’t even need to have your phone, speakers or laptop plugged in for these power adapters to suck power. Try feeling one of these power adapters even when they aren’t powering or charging a device. Feel a little warm? Electricity is still flowing through the transformer and creating heat, which is wasting electricity.

There are many sources of vampire power. Here are some of the more common appliances that leach power from your wall outlets without you knowing:

• TV’s
• DVD Players
• Audio Video Receivers
• Gaming consoles
• TiVo’s or any DVR
• Cable Boxes
• Computer monitors
• Uninterrupted Power Supplies (UPS’s) for computers
• Any recharging station
• Anything with a power adapter or transformer

So how much power is really getting wasted? Is it really worth the trouble to unplug everything when it’s not in use?

The amount of vampire power used by each device varies quite a bit. I was astonished with my wife’s little iPod speaker system we have plugged into the kitchen wall outlet. Even if I disconnect the power jacket from the speakers and leave the power adapter plugged into the wall, it draws 22 watts. Strangely, my 52″ LCD TV draws about .05 watts in standby mode as does my AVR stereo system. I would have expected these things to draw a lot more power. Then of course there are the TiVo’s and DVR’s. When you turn those “off”, you’re really just turning off the video circuitry, but the internal hard drive continues to spin and record shows. However, what I didn’t expect was my old stereo alarm clock drew 28 watts just to display the time on an LCD screen, even when the radio wasn’t on.

So again, would it make that much of a difference if I unplugged all this stuff every time I wasn’t using it? Let’s see … 22 watts for the IPod speakers, 28 watts for an stereo alarm clock, about 2 watts for all my audio video equipment (I’m not counting the DVR because that’s expected), 1 watt for the computer speakers, and about 5 watts for the computer monitor when in standby mode. This adds up to about 58 watts. So how much money am I wasting? Let’s do the math …

• 58 watts divided by 1000 = .058 kilowatts
• .058 kilowatts * 24 hours = 1.392 kilowatts per day
• 1.392 kilowatts * $.10 (cost of a kilowatt where I live) = $0.13 a day
• $0.13 a day * 30 days (about 30 days each month) = $4.18 a month

That’s not that much. In fact, it’s not worth my time to unplug this stuff everyday when I’m done using it. But there a lot of people who say if we all did this we could greatly reduce the amount of wasted electricity and thus reduce carbon emissions. Well OK, let’s assume a city of 1,000,000 households wastes as much electric as me, due to standby power loss (vampire power). That equates to about 1.4 Megawatts a day. While that may sound like a lot, it pales in comparison to all the business that leave their lights on all throughout the night while the stores are closed. Drive by a car dealership at night and look how many high powered lights they leave on. Drive by a shopping mall and look how brightly lit the empty parking lots are. Look at the downtown high-rise buildings. Look at an amusement park, strip mall, or any store that is closed. These guys waste far more electricity than we could ever hope to save by unplugging a few devices in our homes.

You might say they leave their lights on to deter thieves. Well, how about a motion sensor? If 50 flood lights are always on, no one pays attention. But if 50 flood lights were to suddenly turn on because someone set off the motion sensor, I’m sure more people would notice that.

I think we need to work on conserving energy, but let’s start with the top and work our way down.

We live in the small town of Falcon, CO which is on the eastern outskirts of Colorado Springs. Behind us is hundreds of yards of open space that will never be developed which means we take the full brunt of the winter cold spells that barrel in from the north. We found that our gas furnace would run almost continuously during a winter storm and struggled to keep the house warm. During cold nights when there was no wind, the furnace would still fire up about once every 20 minutes and even though it ran for a much shorter time, over the course of the month, our heating bills were averaging about $175.

The only other appliance we have in the house that uses gas is the water heater, which only costs us about $15 a month. So to heat our house, we were spending about $160 x 5 months, or about $800 a year on gas. This was after we installed brand new Champion Windows, replaced weather stripping, insulated the ducts, used a programmable thermostat, kept the house at 68F during “awake” times and sealed all the air infiltration points within the house. The heating bill seemed high and we wanted to cut our heating expense. We looked at purchasing a new higher efficiency furnace, but it was going to cost us about $1200 (not counting installation) and would only be about 10% more efficient than what we have now, so there wasn’t much savings in that plan.

We looked at wood stoves, but you can’t leave them unattended, aren’t nearly as efficient, and they need constant attention. So we instead decided upon a pellet stove. Even though the pellet stove runs a lot more often than the furnace, the pellets are far cheaper than natural gas. We bought 1.5 tons of premium pellets at a cost of $357, which will last us the entire year. This is less than half the cost of our natural gas for the year. So we are saving about $800 – $357 = $443 a year. When using the furnace, we would use a programmable thermostat to turn the temperature down to 64F at night and throughout the day to save on heating costs and still it cost us about $160 a month. As a result, the house was cold during these times and not comfortable. With the pellet stove, the house is warm all the time, all winter long and only costs us about $70 a month, which equates to a savings of $160-$70 = $90 a month.

The warm air finds it way upstairs into the kids room with no problem. We just have to leave their doors slightly open. All rooms on the same level are also kept warm. The only room that remains somewhat cold is our garden level downstairs room (half underground), but this isn’t a big deal because the TV, computer and amplifier tend to heat the room anyway. However, if you have a house that has lots of rooms and hallways, you may find that a pellet stove won’t work that well heating all the rooms. They work best with houses that have open floor plans.

Positive Notes

• Very efficient. I think they rate our Harman XXV stove around 85%, which is about the same as a middle-of-the-road gas furnace. The one thing people overlook is a pellet stove heats the air and circulates it within the house. A furnace heats the air and distributes it through ducts. Sometimes these ducts run through exterior walls, crawlspaces and attics where a lot of heat is lost to conduction heating nonliving spaces. So the pellet stove really is more efficient than a furnace once you take this into consideration.
• Pellets are a lot cheaper than natural gas. Pellets are usually made from wood byproducts, like sawdust that is usually thrown away. Some pellets also contain corn husks which are also normally just thrown away. Point being, pellets are made from “trash” products which means they are cheap. A 40 lbs bag costs about $4.10 (as of 2008). You can get them cheaper if you buy them by the pallet.
• Self-starting, auto feeding and completely safe to leave unattended. This is different than a wood burning stove.
• Very cheap to install. Ours only cost $150 and we had to vent it horizontally out a wall.
• You don’t need a chimney. You can vent it vertically or horizontally and no ash is produced. This is not true of wood stoves which require vertical venting and produce lots of ash.
• Built-in thermostat automatically turns on and shuts off the pellet stove once the desired temperature is reached.

Negative Notes

• Initial cost. We paid $3400 to buy and have the Harman XXV installed.
• Somewhat noisy combustion and blower fans. Not a big deal if the pellet stove is not in a room you sleep in. It’s not so noisy that you cannot have a conversation. For example, it’s about as loud as a small room fan set on low speed. After awhile, it’s like a refrigerator … you don’t pay attention or notice when it’s running.
• Needs an electric plug. A pellet stove uses electricity for the mechanical hopper, auger and the combustion fans. However, these three things are what make the pellet stove burn it’s fuel with high efficiency. If you lose power, the stove will not work. However, there are battery backup options you can purchase. We picked up a small computer UPS battery backup and tuck it behind the stove. Because the stove only pulls about 100 watts, it will last for hours.
• Need a dry place to store the pellets (garage, basement).
• You need to be able to lift a 40 lbs bag about once every 2 or 3 days
• Like a wood fireplace, you will need to occasionally clean the pellet stove to remove ash. This only takes about 30 seconds because there is very little ash produced. If you get high grade premium pellets, you may not have to clean the stove until 1 ton of pellets have been burned.

So far we love the stove. Our furnace hasn’t kicked on once and our bill was only $29.92 last month (water heater plus normal service fees). If the pellets last us the entire winter (which they should) and we save $90 a month on our gas bill, the stove will pay itself off in 6 years. It will pay itself off sooner if we turn the stove down at night or when we leave the house. Right now, we just leave it at 70F all day and night. Also, pellet stoves are quickly gaining in popularity because of the cost savings. As pellet demand increases, more “trash” items will be used in making the pellets which could further reduce their manufacturing cost.

UPDATE: It looks like we are going to end up a bit short on pellets this year. It doesn’t look like 1.5 tons is going to be enough, so we’ll end up buying 2 tons next year. I think I’m also going to get the hardwood pellets to see if there’s a difference. Still no problems with the stove. The glass seems to get this yellow soot on it that’s kind of difficult to clean off, but I found using a razor blade takes it off fairly easily. I’m not using the best pellets so maybe that’s what’s causing it. It’s not that big a deal, though.

Update: We ran into our first problem with the pellet stove. The igniter started failing and the pellets wouldn’t catch on fire. Since the stove was under warranty, they replaced the igniter free of charge with no hassles.