Today I came across a website, 10 Myths About Being Green at Home, that discusses top myths about being green. One that really got my attention was #2, which discusses vampire appliances. Those are appliances which use electricity, when not being used, merely by being plugged in. One big culprit is the cable box, which the website says uses about half the power of a refrigerator while turned off!  It it important to note that items such as lamps, which have hard switches, do not consume power while turned off as the physical connection to the power is interrupted. Modern computers and the like , on the other hand, have so-called soft switches which are connected to circuit boards that remain ready to fire at a moments notice.

So what to do? One way to alleviate the problem is to put these energy sucking devices on a power strip and turn off the strip when not in use; thus physically cutting the current. However, this manual operation requires that you remember to turn of the power strip. In a future post, I will share a system that automates and simplifies this process.

Thanks to This Old House: http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/photos/0,,20308688,00.html