I Vant to Drink Your Vatts

Most people assume that when they turn off the television set it stops drawing power.

But that's not how most TV's (and VCR's and other electronic devices) work. They remain ever in standby mode, silently sipping energy to the tune of 1,000 kilowatt hours a year per household, awaiting the signal to roar into action.

"As a country we pay $1 billion a year to power our TV's and VCR's while they're turned off," said Maria T. Vargas, a spokeswoman for the Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star program, which sets voluntary standards for energy use, and grants its ratings to the most efficient products.

There are billions of vampires in the United States, drawing more than enough current in the typical house to light a 100-watt light bulb 24/7, according to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories, a research arm of the Energy Department.

I realized this when I pulled out my handy dandy Kill-a-Watt. The Plasma TV is a big gulper. Customers don't care about this because they aren't aware of it. One possible solution this article doesn't propose is to have electricity monitors built into houses so you could see exactly how much electricity each outlet is using.

via New York Times