Standby power. What is it, and why does it still consume power after being turned off?
Coffee makers. Television sets. Washing machines. Practically every appliance and electronic device you have plugged in at home is using some electricity – and adding to your utility bill – even when it isn’t in use or even turned on.
“That baseline energy usage is something that many people are not aware of,” Narayanamurthy says, “and it’s something we’re trying to understand better and focus better on how we can address that.” That’s according to a review of published literature and measurements directly conducted by scientists this year at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
For certain items built with a hard mechanical on/off switch, such as some fans, kettles or laptops, standby power can be reduced all the way to zero. “That’s one of the frustrating parts – you may be thinking it’s zero, but it may still be consuming power,” says Meier. “People would always tell me their cat used to love to sleep on their set-top boxes because they were so warm,” says Jennifer Amann, a senior fellow at the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.These devices usually had two prongs, or teeth, and were so good at sucking up energy while their owners slept that they were sometimes referred to as energy vampires, or vampire appliances.
“The new challenge is how do you coordinate across all these different loads and think about them collectively.”
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