I know in my last blog I said that ‘not everyone is able to measure the power consumption of their TV’. Well I take it back…I’ve since heard of a product that allows everyone to do just that.
There are three ways to measure how much electricity something uses:
1. Buy a cheap, simple watt-hour meter to measure specific products
2. Buy & install a wired-in watt-hour meter to measure the whole home (15min job for an electrician)
3. Look at the complicated existing electric meter on the side of your house and use a simple calculation.

I recommend the first example, since it’s the least hassle…and these advices are all about saving you energy. The 3rd option may not be an option at all if you don’t have an updated digital readout device, but just one with a spinning disc.

Buy a cheap, simple watt-hour meter
A watt-hour meter is a little device that tells you how much electricity something uses, either at a given moment or over an extended period of time. Just plug the device into the meter, plug the meter into the wall, and read the display.

What do you think of when you hear the term Energy Vampire?
A. Dracula trying to jump start his heart?
B. Negative people sapping your energy?
C. Electrical products in our homes and offices still sucking up energy after we put them to sleep for the night?

I immediately thought of example C the day I heard the term for the first time, although I dreamt of A later that night. Anyway, it made me think of the products in our homes and offices; the computers, displays, TVs & printers that remain active energy & money leaches, whilst farting Co2 through electricity production and also being a fire risk to homes. Their sleep mode should be as energy saving as ours, but unfortunately I’ve found a shocking truth:
It isn’t so long ago that European guidelines were made to put pressure on manufacturers to provide energy levels in user manuals to consumers, which then got them competitively producing products that have very low power consumptions during sleep mode. Unfortunately though there are still many slightly older products in use today consuming only slightly less power in their Sleep-mode as they do in normal On-mode. I know for instance that my 4 year old 32” LCD TV falls into this major Energy Vamp category.

But not everyone is able to measure the power consumption of their TV. It’s hard to be sure you haven’t got an E-Vamp in your home if you don’t have the product’s bible to guide you or specifications that have neglected the passage on Standby levels.
So what’s a person supposed to do when the ‘Hard Off’* button on products is becoming as hard to find as a blood donor these days.

Well, let me give you a simple way to drive a wooden stake into the heart of these suckers:
I’ve connected most of my appliances at both work and home (computer, display, printer, especially the TV, stereo and all number of players for this that and the other) to a Power Strip, which is a multi-socket extension lead with an integrated power switch. This way you can easily disconnect all the power to all the products with one easy flick of a switch. You can also get remote switches that you can switch off & on via a remote control.
Very easy, very effective & a safer home with No more Vampires, which means a better sleep mode for all!

Oh yeah!  If your answer was either B or C…don’t let them drain you! Instead try your best to turn them with your positivity or drive a stake through their heart! ;)
 
*Hard Off is a switch on a product that completely prevents the electricity from entering the product. As effective as pulling out the plug…a vampire’s teeth!