There are a number of terms used to describe the energy that is used by appliances when they are supposedly switched off, including phantom load, standby power, and vampire draw. Common offenders include laptop power adaptors and VCRs.
Even though the amount of power required by a single device in standby mode is fairly small, when a lot of similar devices are plugged in together, it can add up to quite an unnecessarily heavy power drain. Nearly ten percent of all the electricity generated by British power stations is being wasted in this way.
Most appliances draw around ten to fifteen watts of power in standby mode, most of which goes on keeping the whole transformer ticking over to power a very small part of the appliance. A US-based study from 1998 found that the equivalent output of nearly twenty power stations operating at full capacity was being wasted on standby power, at a combined cost of over three billion dollars annually.
The same study also estimated that nearly three quarters of all the electricity used by consumer electronics devices such as video recorders and CD players was while in standby mode. The easiest way to avoid wasting all this money and precious energy is by using a multi-way adapter with individual switches to turn appliances off when you do not need them, although they can simply be unplugged if you do not have access to such a device.
As of 2006, it has been illegal to sell new electrical goods in the UK that consume more than one watt of energy in standby mode, and many other countries have followed suit. In California, they have gone a step further, and banned devices that consume more than half a watt of power when not in full operation.
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