Lately much is being written about energy saving and how phantom power leakage in your home and office is costing you more than you know. But how much of that is pure hyperbole? Are you really throwing money away when you leave your television and stereo set plugged-in but turned off? We’ll show to how to find out for yourself if it’s even worth bending over to unplug that device.

What is phantom power? It is a term coined to describe the power being consumed by an appliance when it is switched off but not unplugged. For example, turning off your television screen might not stop power consumption because the internal transformer is still connected to the socket and “leaking” power. In addition, other components, such as an LCD clock, display or status light might consume additional power.

How does one solve the problem? Most effectively, unplugging the device entirely from its socket is the best cure, but that can be inconvenient, and might also wear out your plug. Who wants to bend down and reach behind the entertainment center so many times a day to unplug the TV?

Another option is to use a power strip or a smart strip. You can plug multiple devices into a power strip, but just make sure that the total wattage of all the devices does not exceed the power strip’s electrical rating to avoid a fire hazard, or more likely, blown fuses. How do you know if you have exceeded the maximum? We’ll get to that later.

What is the difference between a power strip and a smart strip? A power strip lets you plug a number of electrical appliances into a single outlet and has a single flip switch which turns all of the appliances on or off together.

A smart strip is similar, except that one of the outlets is “smart,” that is, it senses if it is being used or not. If it is not being used, it will turn off all the appliances on the strip. Why is this useful? For example, if you leave your computer on overnight, you can program it to shut down if its power manager is easy to use. When the smart strip senses the lower power usage of your computer, it will also turn off the other plugs, thus turning off other power consumers like your printer, fax machine, table lamp, external computer speakers, etc. It is estimated that this can save over $ 100.00 per year in electrical power just from the computer not including all the peripheral equipment, far more than the cost of the smart strip.

Not too bad from an ROI perspective: Pay $ 30 for a smart strip, save $ 100 per year. Want more returns? Install more energy saving products! After all, do you own stocks or real estate that return over 300% annually? Is this not the same as investing in stocks which return 300% a year? Why not? Someone once said something like “300% saved is truly 300% earned.”

Like we mentioned above, the smart strips work well with an enhanced power manager for your computer, which operates on all Windows platforms and MAC better than the  installed native utility application. Download a trial copy for free now! (While it’s still free…)

Terrific – it pays for itself in a matter of months on a computer, but what about the other appliances? As promised in the beginning of this article, this is where we show you the money,  using an inexpensive electric meter called a “Kill a Watt.”

The following tests were done with the below pictured Kill-a-Watt device as described:

Figure 1 – Kill a Watt measures 10 watts when TV, VCR, DVD Player, and Entertainment System are plugged in but turned off. As you can see, this is NOT costing you a fortune.

Using Maryland BG&E electricity rates of 11 cents per kWH: 10 watts = 0.01 kW.

So, 0.01 kW x $0.11/kWH x 24 hours / day x 365 days / year = $9.64 per year.

At this point, the Kill a Watt device’s annual ROI is about 50%.

Figure 2 – No big surprises here. Zero watts measured when the power strip button was switched off. It just proves that it isn’t hard to save $ 9.64 and reduce some carbon dioxide output into our atmosphere too by using the most effective energy saving device ever devised – the on/off switch.

Figure 3- This time I turned on the VCR and DVD player, but did not press play. They were just sitting in standby as if you had finished a movie and did not turn them off. Do you want to know how much that is costing you?

As above, we calculate: 0.036 kW x 0.11 x 24 x 365 = $ 34.68 wasted per year. The Kill-a-Watt more than paid for itself by giving you the knowledge required to save energy.

And that’s at competitive Baltimore Gas & Electric rates of 11 cents per kWH. What are your electricity rates? Calculate your energy waste or savings with our online energy calculator.

Remember, your electric rates are going up every year! By alot!

Figure 4 – Same as in figure 3, but I also turned on the entertainment system, but did not play anything. Just left it on as if a song had finished playing and we went to bed for the night without turning it off.

0.067 x 0.11 x 24 x 365 = $ 64.56 per year in wasted electricity costs! That’s not much, but it’s 3 times the cost of the Kill-a-Watt meter, without which you would not be discovering these opportunities to save power.

Observe:  This was just the VCR, DVD Player, and Entertainment System, and they weren’t even being used.

What happens when you leave the TV on? How about the space heater when nobody is using it? Why don’t you calculate those numbers yourself? You might be shocked by the answer! (Hint: A TV can easily consume 240 watts of electricity, and more, depending on its size and technology, while an electric space heater typically consumes between 1000 – 1600 watts.) Go ahead and run those numbers!

Click on the Kill a Watt banner below and buy one for a miserly $ 20.00+ and you will be on the road to saving HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS! Remember, you can’t save what you cannot see, so the first step to saving hundreds of dollars, if not thousands, is to buy yourself a Kill a Watt and a Smart Strip or two. With the $ 30.00 Amazon Card rebate you get prior to check-out, you will get these devices almost for free. Buy them now and start saving:

If you need a more robust smart meter for internet-monitored commercial or industrial applications, you should choose our Smart Meter instead.

Finally, you cannot reduce your power consumption to zero without going back to a Stone Age lifestyle, so for the remaining power consumption in your home or business, make sure you are using GREEN power, that is, from renewable sources.

You can compare energy plans by clicking here.

• It’s free to switch
• It’s free to switch back
• There are no contracts, no minimums, no cancellation fees
• It takes 5 minutes
• No credit checks, no social security number needed
• Your local utility still bills you and provides emergency service
• You’ll be using 20% or 100% (your choice) clean wind power
• YOU”LL SAVE MONEY OVER YOUR UTILITY RATES
• The service is “Green-E’ certified

What are you waiting for? Switch now!