A few âGreenâ buzzwords Iâve been hearing about lately are âVampire Loadsâ, âVampire Powerâ or âPhantom Powerâ. They all mean the same thing. If you havenât heard about these yet, just wait, you will. Wikipedia defines these terms as âthe electric power consumed by electronic appliances while they are switched off or in a standby mode.â Simply put, this is power that electronic devices use while theyâre not really in use, such as cell phone charges, printers, computers, etc. I have a tendency to question the validity of these types of things when I hear them, and I really started to question this when my wife started unplugging her cell phone charger when not in use to save electricity.
After I saw a television commercial sponsored by GE Electric where a guy unplugged his toaster to prevent vampire drains, I was fed up because I didnât believe it for a second. 
I knew that computers, monitors, and printers use a fair amount of electricity, but I was skeptical about toasters and cell phone chargers. I decided to take my electrical tester around my house to measure how much electricity actually gets used by all these so-called âVampiresâ. I threw in a 60 watt light bulb for comparison. I used an electrical tester that measures as little as 1.1 Watts. Here are the results:
The last items on the list used less than 1.1 watts. Any surprises? I was right about the toaster not using anything, but I was surprised at the amount of electricity saved by putting my computer in standby mode. This only saved a couple watts! After doing this test, Iâm going to leave my cell phone charger plugged in, and Iâm going to start putting my computer in to hibernation mode when Iâm not using it.
Reuben Saltzman, Structure Tech Home Inspections – Email – Minneapolis Home Inspections
