Those little red and green and blue lights that glow in the dark after you’ve thrown the switches on the way to bed? Those are the signs of electricity burglars working while you’re asleep or away. They’re on the TV, the computer, the printer, the microwave, the DVD player, the stereo – you name it. They show that an appliance is in stand-by or “sleep” mode, not fully on, but not fully off, either. Some of these burglars steal a lot of electricity, anywhere from 2 to 20 watts, day in, day out, year in, year out. For instance, an older TV “standing by” in an unused room at 6 watts would run about 1 kilowatt hour every week, or 52 kilowatt-hours a year, just sitting there.
Standby power levels recommended by the government’s EnergyStar program range from 1 to 3 watts, but when you have a dozen such recommended burglars in the house, it can still add up to real waste and money. Appliances whose electronic clocks are vital to their function need to be left on, but others should be plugged into power strips with switches that fully break the circuit when you turn it off. If you have a computer, monitor, printer, and scanner all plugged into a single power strip, you can manage them all at once.
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