Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Pay there and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heeart Radio
Speaker 1: and how the tech are you. It's time for a
Speaker 1: tech Stuff Tidbits Spooky edition. Today we're going to look
Speaker 1: at the spooky world of them buyer power. Which by
Speaker 1: that I don't mean being able to turn into a
Speaker 1: bat or a wolf or missed. We're being able to
Speaker 1: hypnotize victims. We're not going to talk about being able
Speaker 1: to enter a building only after being invited. No, we're
Speaker 1: talking about electronics here. But it's also sometimes called pandom
Speaker 1: energy spooky. All right, let's um, we'll sweep aside the
Speaker 1: late night hard TV show post gimmick. I know it
Speaker 1: was cringe, E I know I did it on purpose.
Speaker 1: You don't have to tell me how cringe it was.
Speaker 1: It was a it was a choice. So let's talk
Speaker 1: about vampire power. Basically, that term refers to the tendency
Speaker 1: for plug in electronic devices to continue to leach electricity
Speaker 1: even when those devices are turned off or in a
Speaker 1: sleep mode. So, for example, let's say you've plugged in
Speaker 1: a cell phone charger and you just you plugged it
Speaker 1: into the wall and you just leave the charger plugged
Speaker 1: in all the time. So when your smartphone needs to recharge,
Speaker 1: you take the USB side and you plug it into
Speaker 1: your smartphone and or the lightning side if you're using
Speaker 1: an iPhone, and then when you're done, you unplug the
Speaker 1: cable from your smartphone, but you leave the charger plugged
Speaker 1: into the wall. Well, that charger actually continues to drain
Speaker 1: electricity all the time when it's plugged in. Uh if
Speaker 1: you touch a charger and it's warm, that means that
Speaker 1: it's been consuming electricity and that electricity has been converted
Speaker 1: into waste heat even though nothing has been plugged into
Speaker 1: that cable to recharge. That's vampire power. Now, in some cases,
Speaker 1: this whole vampire power thing, it's not a bug. It's
Speaker 1: a feature. By that, I mean it's part of standby
Speaker 1: mode or standby power. This is what keeps certain devices
Speaker 1: like cable boxes, uh TVs, video game systems, computers. It
Speaker 1: keeps them ready to come on to full power with
Speaker 1: as little delay as possible. The devices remain in a
Speaker 1: low power mode when they are not in use, so
Speaker 1: that when it does come time to use them. They're
Speaker 1: ady to spring into action with as little delay as
Speaker 1: can be created, and that way you don't have a
Speaker 1: slower powering up sequence frustrating your consumers. Now, way back
Speaker 1: in the bad old days, I remember having a TV
Speaker 1: that would take it seemed like the better part of
Speaker 1: a minute to really power up. Now I'm old. This
Speaker 1: was an old black and white television that we had,
Speaker 1: and it was old even when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: right Like, this was not a brand new TV. Color
Speaker 1: TV was definitely around in the seventies, y'all. We had
Speaker 1: a color TV. It's just this was an extra one,
Speaker 1: like a smaller black and white TV that we happened
Speaker 1: to have, and I got to keep it in my room. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't remember really watching much on it, but yeah,
Speaker 1: you would turn the power on and then slowly, you know,
Speaker 1: gradually the image would take shape on the screen, and
Speaker 1: even after it formed, it would actually take a little
Speaker 1: bit longer for the screen to reach the right level
Speaker 1: of brightness, so it would gradually get a little brighter.
Speaker 1: I didn't think of it as taking our super long
Speaker 1: time back then, because I mean, I didn't have a
Speaker 1: whole lot to compare it to our color television also
Speaker 1: took a while to come on, um, because this is
Speaker 1: the c R T days, and the TV at least
Speaker 1: the black and white one was likely on its last
Speaker 1: TV legs, So you know, you didn't have very high expectations.
Speaker 1: But you skip ahead and now we've got all these
Speaker 1: high tech TVs, whether it's q LED or O LEAD
Speaker 1: or you know, there was that that time briefly when
Speaker 1: plasma TVs were a big thing. Some of y'all might
Speaker 1: still have lasma televisions. And you know, you also have
Speaker 1: a consumer base that has come to expect instant gratification
Speaker 1: and that's hard to deliver upon. So to meet that expectation,
Speaker 1: standby power is often the go to strategy. The television
Speaker 1: or you know, similar device like video game console or whatever.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have to go from zero to top speed
Speaker 1: in an instant because it's idling at a lower speed,
Speaker 1: if you will. It's ready to accelerate once you hit
Speaker 1: that power button, but it never is actually staying still.
Speaker 1: To continue that analogy, and here's the crazy thing about
Speaker 1: vampire power, folks, over the lifetime of certain products, especially
Speaker 1: things like microwaves or even televisions, the device might actually
Speaker 1: consume more power when it's not in use then when
Speaker 1: it is in use. Now I'm talking about over the
Speaker 1: lifetime of the DV, not on your average day or
Speaker 1: even your average month, but when you add up the
Speaker 1: entire lifespan of when you bought the thing, plugged it in,
Speaker 1: and when you finally got rid of it. A lot
Speaker 1: of these devices, if you were to tally up there
Speaker 1: there uh a contribution to your electricity bill, you would
Speaker 1: find that they actually cost more collectively on the times
Speaker 1: they were off than when the times they were on.
Speaker 1: So in most cases, the amount of electricity these devices
Speaker 1: are pulling when they're off or in standby mode is
Speaker 1: much less than when you're actively using them. Some the
Speaker 1: gap is actually pretty small, like certain TVs, it's not
Speaker 1: that big of a gap between when the television is
Speaker 1: actually being used and when it's in standby mode. But
Speaker 1: for other devices it is remarkably different. Like it's a
Speaker 1: massive difference. Um, But you know, you're only using these
Speaker 1: devices for a relatively short amount of time compared to
Speaker 1: the rest of the time or in your home, right
Speaker 1: like you're not running your microwave all day. I hope
Speaker 1: that would be bad. Microwaves are designed to heat food
Speaker 1: very very quickly. So the length of time that you
Speaker 1: own a microwave, you know, you only use that a
Speaker 1: tiny bit, Like if you made that a pie chart
Speaker 1: for how long you own the microwave versus how much
Speaker 1: of that time you you actually use the microwave. It's
Speaker 1: a tiny sliver, and yet it can pull more electricity
Speaker 1: when it's off collectively than when it's on. Now, in
Speaker 1: the case of micro is, by the way, it's not
Speaker 1: so much that that devices in standby mode as it
Speaker 1: requires electricity to power what are called background functions, you know,
Speaker 1: like that digital clock, which I'm going to rant about
Speaker 1: later in this episode. So what this amounts to is,
Speaker 1: as you would imagine, a lot of wasted electricity, a
Speaker 1: lot of electricity that your home is using that isn't
Speaker 1: actually going to power anything actively, like it's not an
Speaker 1: active use, So that electricity is just kind of going
Speaker 1: down the drain. That in turn leads to some pretty
Speaker 1: hefty electricity bills, or at least inflated electricity bills. So
Speaker 1: my co worker Robert Lamb, one of the hosts of
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blew Your Mind, he wrote an article way
Speaker 1: back in the house stuff works days about vampire power. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in that article he cites a figure that US
Speaker 1: consumers spend around eight billion dollars more on a tricity
Speaker 1: per year thanks to vampire power. So if you take
Speaker 1: whatever the US consumers spend per year on electricity, eight
Speaker 1: billion of that is just because of devices that aren't
Speaker 1: in active use. Now, I'm not sure when Robert actually
Speaker 1: wrote that article. I know it did have to be
Speaker 1: a long time ago because we haven't been part of
Speaker 1: how stuff works for several years now. But in our
Speaker 1: DC dot org submits that today it's much much worse
Speaker 1: than eight billion dollars. That figure, according to in our
Speaker 1: DC dot org, is now around nineteen billion dollars spent
Speaker 1: to power in active electronics each year, and there are
Speaker 1: other sources that have even higher estimates. Now, granted, these
Speaker 1: are estimates, right, It's not like we have a meter
Speaker 1: that we can just look at and say, oh, and
Speaker 1: here's how much the vampire power has cost this year,
Speaker 1: So you have to keep that in mind. These are estimates.
Speaker 1: But if you're in the nineteen billion dollar neighborhood, and
Speaker 1: again I saw one estimate that went as high as
Speaker 1: I think twenty six billion dollars. It's significant. It's a
Speaker 1: significant amount of money being wasted to power devices that
Speaker 1: aren't actually being used. So all too old estimates PEG
Speaker 1: vampire power is contributing to between fourteen to twenty percent
Speaker 1: of your electricity bill UM, So again it's significant. It
Speaker 1: even if your average bill isn't that high, a significant
Speaker 1: part of that bill comes from things that you're not
Speaker 1: actively using, at least not all month. And considering that
Speaker 1: at least some of that electricity depending on where you're at,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's not for each of you, but
Speaker 1: you know, some of us are are depending upon electricity
Speaker 1: that comes to us courtesy of coal and natural gas,
Speaker 1: those kind of power plants, power plants that use fossil fuels.
Speaker 1: It means for us that our plugged in but otherwise
Speaker 1: unused electronics are contribu reading to problems like pollution and
Speaker 1: climate change. So not only does vampire power cost you money,
Speaker 1: it potentially is also causing an environmental issue. Now, granted,
Speaker 1: if your power is coming from primarily like hydro electric
Speaker 1: power or some other renewable source, it's different, right, Like
Speaker 1: your your power is not coming from a coal powered
Speaker 1: power plant, then obviously the environmental issue doesn't really play
Speaker 1: as big a part. The financial one still does, but
Speaker 1: not the environmental. But for a lot of folks, including myself,
Speaker 1: my power comes from a power company that still largely
Speaker 1: depends upon coal and natural gas. So that's something else
Speaker 1: for me to consider. All Right, I'm gonna talk more
Speaker 1: about the spooky effects of vampire power after we come
Speaker 1: back from these messages. Okay, let's talk about some of
Speaker 1: the devices that have the worst reputations for vampire power.
Speaker 1: Those would include things like set top boxes. The king
Speaker 1: of those would be digital cable boxes that incorporate DVRs
Speaker 1: because even with their quote unquote off, they're really on
Speaker 1: in order to be able to leap into action and
Speaker 1: record stuff and all that kind of thing. That can
Speaker 1: lead to vampire costs of nearly fifty dollars a year
Speaker 1: just an off mode. So you're spending an extra fifty
Speaker 1: bucks just for having that off. That's, you know, significant,
Speaker 1: Think about what else you can have for that fifty bucks.
Speaker 1: Game consoles coming around twenty six dollars per year if
Speaker 1: you're just allowing them to be in standby mode. Some
Speaker 1: game consoles actually let you turn that feature off when
Speaker 1: you first get them where you know, it's a setting
Speaker 1: where when you turn the console off, it really is off.
Speaker 1: But most consoles allow for standby mode so that you
Speaker 1: can do like a remote power thing with your controller
Speaker 1: um and that it doesn't take as long for the
Speaker 1: console to come up online, so that you're not you know,
Speaker 1: sitting around for a minute or two waiting for it
Speaker 1: to finish the boot up sequence. K TV might come
Speaker 1: in closer to twenty two dollars of vampire power per year.
Speaker 1: Computers and idle mode kind of have similar issues. If
Speaker 1: you have a desktop that you're just putting into sleep mode,
Speaker 1: then it comes in around twenty three dollars fifty cents
Speaker 1: per year. Laptops are a little less, like seventeen dollars
Speaker 1: fifty cents a year. There are other electronics that are
Speaker 1: much less greedy for electricity, like that phone charger which
Speaker 1: I talked about the beginning. Your typical phone charger might
Speaker 1: be sucking down like twenty cents of electricity per year
Speaker 1: when it's not plugged into anything. So in that case, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, it's constantly pulling on electricity, but it's not
Speaker 1: a lot. So in the grand scheme of things, it's
Speaker 1: a small it's a small consideration, but our electronics are
Speaker 1: definitely sapping electricity even when we're not using them. So
Speaker 1: what can we do about that? All right? There are
Speaker 1: a few different options. One is that we can use
Speaker 1: power strips that have a cut off switch on them,
Speaker 1: so I'm talking about ones that actually have a switch.
Speaker 1: You can do searches for these. There's a bunch of
Speaker 1: different types, um that have different ratings and things. But
Speaker 1: the idea is that when you are not using the
Speaker 1: electronics that are plugged into that strip, you can turn
Speaker 1: the strip to off and it actually does cut off
Speaker 1: all the electricity going to those devices. They will not
Speaker 1: be able to draw power because the power strip itself
Speaker 1: prevents it from happening. UM. Obviously, a big downside with
Speaker 1: that is that if you turn the power strip off,
Speaker 1: it affects everything that's been plugged into it. So if
Speaker 1: it's something where you wanted to you say, your stereo system,
Speaker 1: which is plugged into the same power strip as your television,
Speaker 1: and you can't just turn the power strip off so
Speaker 1: that the TV is not pulling vampire power because your
Speaker 1: stereo systems plugged into it too. So that's clearly like
Speaker 1: a downside to that, you have to sit there and think,
Speaker 1: all right, how do I plug this in where the
Speaker 1: stuff that's all going to be on at the same
Speaker 1: time makes sense and the stuff that's all going to
Speaker 1: be off at the same time makes sense, And that
Speaker 1: starts to get into like a kind of ridiculous scenario
Speaker 1: depending upon what you're looking at, right, But that is
Speaker 1: one option. Um you could also manually unplugged devices after use.
Speaker 1: That's also a hassle, there's no doubt about that, like
Speaker 1: to have to go through and actually unplugged stuff step
Speaker 1: by step. And some devices like your coffee maker draw
Speaker 1: or your charger for that matter, they draw so little
Speaker 1: power in comparison to say a microwave that there's not
Speaker 1: much point in doing it. Like, yes, you could unplug
Speaker 1: your phone charger from the wall, and it's not bad
Speaker 1: to do it. It's not a bad idea, but it's
Speaker 1: not making as big a difference, right that twenty cents
Speaker 1: of electricity per year. It's it's a negligible amount. I
Speaker 1: mean every little bit helps, yes, but compared to things
Speaker 1: like your microwave, of your TVs, your digital cable boxes,
Speaker 1: it's nothing. So it really, you know, you can kind
Speaker 1: of get away with just keeping it plugged in if
Speaker 1: you're taking out some of the bigger guys, right your
Speaker 1: TV is, your audio systems, your set top boxes, that
Speaker 1: can make a real difference to your power bill. For
Speaker 1: stuff like computers, you can choose to shut them down
Speaker 1: when you're done using them rather than just putting them
Speaker 1: into sleep mode. However, and boy I love these howevers,
Speaker 1: there is a potential issue there. Every time you turn
Speaker 1: on the computer, it has to go through the whole
Speaker 1: boot up sequence, and there is a surge of electricity
Speaker 1: when this happens that actually does produce a little wear
Speaker 1: and tear on the computer itself. And if your computer
Speaker 1: happens to have things like hard disk drive in it,
Speaker 1: well that physically has to spin up to be used.
Speaker 1: And so there is an argument to be made that
Speaker 1: shutting down your computer entirely and then turning it on
Speaker 1: every time you want to use it can actually reduce
Speaker 1: the useful lifespan of your computer. It will wear out faster.
Speaker 1: Then we get into a very complicated issue because if
Speaker 1: it turns out you're going to have to replace your
Speaker 1: computer on a shorter schedule, like slightly more frequently and
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about like going from replacing it every
Speaker 1: you know, five years, to every year and a half
Speaker 1: or something, but it will be a shorter schedule. That
Speaker 1: means you also end up placing demands all up and
Speaker 1: down the supply chain, and there's this ripple effect going on. Right. So,
Speaker 1: like you might say, oh, I saved on electricity, but
Speaker 1: because I have to buy this computer more frequently, the
Speaker 1: long term budget effects and the long term environmental impact
Speaker 1: are actually worse because of having to replace the machine. Now, personally,
Speaker 1: I think shutting down your computer is a good idea
Speaker 1: if you're done using it for the day. That's what
Speaker 1: I do. Once I'm done for the day, I'll turn
Speaker 1: it off. But if you're gonna be going back and
Speaker 1: forth to a computer during the day, I would say
Speaker 1: just leave it an idle mode between sessions because it's
Speaker 1: gonna require less wear and tear. The idle mode is
Speaker 1: not going to pull nearly as much electricity as when
Speaker 1: it's on. So as long as you are shutting it
Speaker 1: off after you're done using it, I think things are
Speaker 1: pretty much okay. But that's my personal opinion on this matter.
Speaker 1: I actually read several articles about this and let's just
Speaker 1: say there's a lack of consensus on the matter. Now,
Speaker 1: beyond the inconvenience of unplugging stuff, there are other frustrations.
Speaker 1: And this is where I get back to that darn
Speaker 1: digital clock, especially on things like, you know, microwaves. So
Speaker 1: if you were to unplug your microwave after use, it
Speaker 1: means you either have to be willing to put up
Speaker 1: with the fact that you're gonna have digital mockery there's
Speaker 1: this clock face that's gonna be blinking at you every
Speaker 1: time you plug it back in, or you actually go
Speaker 1: through the foolish steps of setting the clock each and
Speaker 1: every time. And therein lies madness. And yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: little thing, but you can see how heavily it weighs
Speaker 1: on me. One big thing we can do when we
Speaker 1: shop for electronics in the first place, is we can
Speaker 1: look for Energy Star certification on those devices. The Environmental
Speaker 1: Protection Agency sets the standards for energy efficiency that are
Speaker 1: required to meet in order to qualify as an Energy
Speaker 1: Star certified device. So products that have the Energy Star
Speaker 1: label have to meet certain efficiency, quality and performance standards. Now,
Speaker 1: that does not necessarily mean that a product that doesn't
Speaker 1: have the label is automatically worse, but does mean we
Speaker 1: don't really know because it hasn't been certified, so it's
Speaker 1: better to look for that label. Hey Jonathan, I hear
Speaker 1: some of you asked, what do you do about your electronics? Well,
Speaker 1: if I'm leaving my house for any length of time,
Speaker 1: like a weekend trip or something, I'll switch off the
Speaker 1: power switches to certain devices, but I'll leave others on,
Speaker 1: like I leave my wifind out work on, because I
Speaker 1: can do stuff like access certain smart home features while
Speaker 1: I'm away. If I'm gone for a longer amount of time,
Speaker 1: then I tend to unplug and shut down more of
Speaker 1: my stuff. But in my day to day I'm pretty
Speaker 1: guilty of leaving things in standby mode, which honestly I
Speaker 1: should probably stop doing because being aware of how that
Speaker 1: adds to the power load means I'm part of the problem.
Speaker 1: There's only so far individual or responsibility can take us,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't mean we shouldn't do our own part.
Speaker 1: And that's it for this tech stuff tidbits on Vampire Power.
Speaker 1: Hope you enjoyed it. Reach out to me if you
Speaker 1: have suggestions for the show. You can do that on Twitter.
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Speaker 1: to you again really soon. Tex Stuff is an I
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