Low Impact

I’ve slowly been investigating the various appliances in my house with my new MS6115 Power Meter, looking for the worst “Phantom Power” culprits - those appliances that still consume power, even when they appear to be “off”.

There’s three rules of thumb that make it pretty clear when an appliance will still be drawing power when they’re in the “off” state (but still turned on at the power point):

1. If the appliance is remote controlled, it will still be using power while it waits to detect you switching it on with the remote.
2. If the appliance has a clock, or a “standby” light, it will be using power (at the very least to display the clock or light)
3. If the appliance is warm to the touch when switched off, it is often due to some sort of electric current. Those power adapters which you use to charge up your mobile phone are a good example.

I’ve already found a few unsurprising power-wasters. A remote-controlled fan (a god-send when you wake up from the heat on a still summer night!) was using around 15 watts just waiting for me to turn it on. That works out to be around 130 KwH a year, or $13 on my electricity bill and 130 kg of CO2 into the atmosphere*. I make sure I switch it off at the wall when I go to work now! And my LCD computer monitor which showed an orange light when “off” turned out to be using another 7 watts.

But one surprise turned out to be my washing machine. I always make sure that I turn off the taps when its not in use - I’ve heard too many horror stories of people coming home and finding the hoses have burst, and the house flooded! But I usually leave it powered on at the wall - its not remote controlled, there are no little “standby” lights or clocks on the front, and there’s a nice, clunky mechanical knob you need to turn to switch it from “off” to your desired program. But to my surprise, even when switched “off”, it uses 16 watts. For the life of me I can’t see why this is, but regardless, thats another $13 and 130 kilograms of CO2 a year contributing to climate change.

Now obviously my 130 kg of carbon dioxide is peanuts in the scheme of things. But if the other 10 million households in Australia had the same washing machine, using the same wasted power, that would add up to 1.3 million tonnes each year from this one example alone!

You might think that the changes you make in your own home can’t have much of an impact, but you have to remember that whatever you find in your own home is likely repeated millions of times across Australia - and the planet. There’s a lot of people out there! So it’s well worth taking the time to see what phantom power wasters you can find around the place, whether you use a power meter, or just look for the 3 tell-tale signs above.

* My household uses Green Power - where my electricity provider sources the equivalent of my power consumption from “green” sources like solar and wind farms. So strictly speaking, my power consumption should be carbon-free. But consuming less power regardless is still a good thing - it “frees up” that green energy and reduces the need for the authorities to build a new coal power plant!

Categories: efficiency, energy, environment, green, reduce

Tags: appliance, efficiency, ms6115, phantom power