Vampire energy has been getting a lot of press recently, as people become increasingly aware of the gluttony of energy vampires and the ease of stopping them. Energy vampires, of course, are those electronic devices that continue to nibble on energy even when they're turned off. They include just about everything with a digital clock or an LED display light.
Contrary to popular myth, however, getting rid of vampire energy doesn't have to mean walking around your house and unplugging every electronic device, one by one. Since most vampires travel in packs, anyway (think: TV, DVD player, Wii; or computer, printer, speakers, external hard drive), you can kill a bunch of vampires at once by plugging them all into a smart power strip.
Our favorite is the BITS Smart Strip. It works as a power strip, surge protector, and it's smart - and easy. This short video shows just how easy:
Comments
Great post -- the video is well done and makes it easy to understand.
I started with one Smart Strip, and recently bought three more (special deal at Amazon). There are a couple of points I wanted to add.
First, if your desktop computer is actually a laptop (with an external monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc, the SmartStrip may or may not work as expected. The control outlet works by detecting a change in current -- laptops may not draw enough current when they come on to trigger the SmartStrip to turn on the switched outlets.
Also, there is an adjuster on the side to set the sensitivity -- how much change is needed to make the switched outlets turn on, but even in that case, I found having the computer be the control device wouldn't work.
There is an alternative, however -- instead, put the laptop in an "always on" plug, and use the external monitor as the control device. Then, pressing the on button on the monitor will turn everything else on. And, as a bonus, if you have your computer set to turn off the monitor after a few minutes, it will switch everything else off automatically -- pretty cool!
The point about the DVR is a good one -- it needs to be on all the time. If you don't have a DVR and are thinking about getting one, consider a TiVo instead of the ones built-in to cable boxes. Cable boxes with DVRs use a surprising amount of electricity -- I had a regular digital cable box, and noticed that it got hot (not warm) to the touch. I measured its consumption using a Kill-o-watt meter, and it came in at something like 120W, all the time (which at our electricity rate is more than $100/year). The TiVo uses far less power (often as little as 15W) and gets rid of the need for the cable box by using "CableCARD"s to decode the signals. TiVo is also far better from a user standpoint than the cable DVRs, but this is turning into a TiVo ad :-) so I'll shut up now.
Anyway, the SmartStrip power strips totally rock. I am pretty sure we're saving well more than a hundred dollars a year with the ones we have installed now.
Posted by tharrison on May 23, 2009 7:41amHey, I read a lot of blogs on a daily basis and for the most part, people lack substance but, I just wanted to make a quick comment to say GREAT blog!.....I"ll be checking in on a regularly now....Keep up the good work! :)
-Robert Shumake Fifth Third
Posted by Robert Shumake on Feb 3, 2010 4:47am