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Avoid the Vampires and take our 6 at 6 challenge!

Saturday 3 December 2011

On Tuesday the 6th of December we are encouaraging all our children to try and switch off electrical items that are not needed or being used. Have a fangtastic time reading our article!

If you haven't heard of vampire power, you may think it has something to do with turning into a bat, a wolf or a thick, white mist. In reality, where the dead don't stalk the living, vampire power is the energy sucked by plugged-in appliances that are on standby mode or otherwise turned off.

Imagine a super-vampire, a day-walker if you will. Now think of the metaphorical super-vampire in home energy terms. These home-energy super-vampires would be the appliances and electronics left on for extended periods of time, even though no one is using them.

Some people run their TV all day or leave their computer screens on. This is wasteful. How wasteful? Let's find out. (Remember different brands and sizes of appliances will use different amounts of energy.) -

All figures are per hour.

TV
A TV on standby mode burns 10 watts in standby and 100 watts while on per hour.

DVD player

DVD uses 7 watts in standby. (Is it blinking 12:00 all day?) It uses 12 while turned on.

Modem

Your modem uses 14 watts an hour whether you are using it or not.

Computer

Your PC, including all the peripheries, drinks 15 watts on standby and 130 when left on. The monitor is the largest energy-gulper, scarfing down 11 in standby and 70 when in use. (Turn them off.)

Laptop

Laptops are a bit better. 2 watts in standby and 29 while in use.

Phone Charger

A phone charger takes one watt an hour whilst in standby, 5 when in use.

Click here if you want to read the full article.

More Advice;

Make sure lights and other electrical equipment in rooms you're not using are turned off (not just left on standby) and only leave your chargers plugged in and switched on when you're actually charging your device. At all other times make sure the socket is switched off and, ideally, your charger is unplugged. Easy!

Did you know that 95% of the energy used by the UK's mobile phone chargers is wasted energy? Only 5% is actually used to charge phones, the rest is used when the charger is plugged into the wall but not switched off at the socket.

That's over 50,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions that could be avoided if we all just unplugged our chargers after use. Amazingly, this is the equivalent of almost 500 football pitches' worth of forest every year. Incredible!

And that goes for all appliances! Leaving televisions, DVDs and computers on standby, rather than switching them off, emits four million tonnes of CO2 and wastes £740m a year. The average household could save £37 in electricity bills each year by turning appliances off and not leaving them charging unnecessarily.

Click here to read the full article and see a funny video.

From the www dots - Protecting our Planet