Environmental projects, community events & personal commitments.
Project creators launch their ideas and create goals that determine the success of the project. Participants join in, accomplish goals, and earn rewards.
It can be big or small, serious or playful. Get inspired, tap the drum, start a rhythm, and the results will come.
Do you know what vampire power is? It's a cool name for something not so cool.
What Wikipedia says is this: "Standby power, also called vampire power, vampire draw, phantom load, or leaking electricity, refers to the electric power consumed by electronic appliances while they are switched off or in a standby mode. A very common electricity vampire is a power adapter which has no power-off switch."
Most people have things like this all over the house: microwaves with a clock; stand-by mode for a TV; phone chargers left plugged into the wall even though the phone is not attached; that kind of thing.
Some of these are tough to eradicate. You're probably not going to unplug your microwave every time you heat up yesterday's leftovers. But then again -- once you're aware of it, you just might unplug it when you go on that week-long vacation.
Other vampire loads are easy -- it's a simple thing to remember to unplug your phone charger, for example.
Here's another part to the Wikipedia entry: "The wasted standby power (vampire energy loss) of individual household electronic devices is typically very small, but the sum of all such devices within the household becomes significant."
So go forth and assess your vampire load -- and commit to reducing it down as much as possible.
(December 31, 2010)
At night we are unplugging...
At night we are unplugging the microwave, the coffee pot, and switching off the power strip to the computer & printer.
Hi Barry, [br] [br] The...
Hi Barry,
The first link isn't working. I get a message that "the page doesn't exist."
Thanks!
Within arm's reach I've already...
Within arm's reach I've already nailed one - my beast of a printer that I certainly don't need on all day! I plan to see how many more I can find today...
I unplugged 3 devices --...
I unplugged 3 devices -- one was the kid's computer they don't use much, which was sleeping; one was a printer I don't use much; another was my phone charger.
I've been amazed at what little changes in my electrical usage will do. We have solar cells on our roof, and it's interesting how I think we're using very little electricity, but our meter still spins forwards. When I turn off a few lights and go outside to check it again, it's turning backwards. This vampire power project is almost more about attitude -- getting a mindset of just stopping energy leaks!