Hunting Vampires

As part of my ongoing energy savings project I am confronted with the Vampire. This means I have to hunt down stuff that sucks power doing nothing...I think.

That's where I am at the moment, trying to define what a true Vampire is in electrical terms. Most would define it as standby power. There's no clock or anything useful going on. It's just sitting there waiting for you to ask it to do something, usually with a remote.

If I use that definition strictly, I have numerous devices, but I just suspicion it's not a lot of energy. I am measuring each of these devices and totaling their collective power use. I will post results soon.

What's tricky, or maybe it just needs a different name, is that stuff that has a minor function like a clock or a battery charger that keeps the battery charged. I have a rechargeable hand vacuum that we use about every two weeks. But am I paying to charge it all the time? That's probably worse than a Vampire. I suggest we call them Zombies. They wander around all the time wasting energy while doing very little real work.

Bottom Line #1 - Whatever we call it, if it runs 24 x 7 we need to look at it closely. There are very few things that we need around the clock, so if we are powering it, we are wasting energy.