Reduce Your Vampire Power and Save $980!

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Are you an Energy Vampire?

Did you know that you could be saving money as we speak by simply unplugging all unused household and kitchen appliances every night?

Seriously!? How much money can I really save by unplugging everything in my house? What, like a couple of dollars?

You wouldn’t believe how much money you can save on your next electric bill by simply unplugging things when you’re not using them.

Last year alone we saved a whopping $980.00. Divide that by 12 months and that equals out to approximately $81.00 in monthly savings in 2010.

See the proof in the scanned report below:

What the Hell is Vampire Power?

Vampire power is more commonly known as “standby” or “standby power”. It refers to the amount of electricity that is used by appliances and other devices when they are either sitting in standby mode or switched off entirely. YES, the power is switched OFF but that doesn’t mean your device/appliance isn’t drawing power!

Some devices have a standby mode that uses anywhere from ten to fifteen watts. Sure, ten to fifteen watts doesn’t sound like much but when you have a dozen things around the house that are currently drawing power or are in standby mode your energy waste starts to really add up.

Many home appliances such as TV’s, DVD Players, Radios, Computers, and Kitchen Appliances all draw a small amount of power even when they are switched OFF. Most people think that because they switch off their bedside lamps that there’s no possible way that there would be any power running to it. Well, you’re WRONG!

Find out how we manage to keep tabs on those pesky little plugs by reading more below.

Hassle Free Solutions:

Obviously the last thing you want to have to do before you leave for work is run around making sure every outlet is plug-free. That would be such a hassle!

Here’s two quick and easy solutions to make sure you leave your home up and running while saving as much money as possible and staying sane at the same time…

Solution #1:

Run down to your local electronics/big box store and pick up a few Power Strips. You can usually find these handy little things for around $10. If you buy them online, you’ll find them to be even cheaper!  The use of power strips in your home will not only save you a ton of time, but it will also cut the power to all of your electronics with one simple click of a button!

Recommended: Fellowes 6-Outlet Power Strip – (4ft) OR Fellowes 6-Outlet Power Strip – (15ft)

Solution #2: You may want to take that extra step of security by purchasing a power strip with surge protection. Surge protectors will save your major electronics (TV, Computer, Stereo System, etc) if and when there’s a power outage or brown out in your area. The last thing you want is to have to go out and buy a new television because your TV got struck by a surge. Yikes!

Recommended: Belkin 12-Outlet Home/Office Surge Protector

Now What?

Okay, so you have your power strips in hand, right? Let’s take a walk around the house and rewire all of your cluttered most important electronics. Obviously you’d be better off plugging in all of your Television, DVD Player, Speaker Systems, etc into your new power strip rather than plugging in the one small lamp next to your bed into the strip. Find parts of the house that have the most plugs in one area and try to link them all together on a strip.

Once finished you should have your most important electronic devices plugged into a strip. The rest (lamps, night lights, cell phone chargers, blenders, toaster ovens, kettles, etc) can all be unplugged once you’re finished with them. It may seem tedious at first but once you get it hammered into your brain, you’ll be unplugging things without even thinking.

How to Kill-a-Watt:

So you’re interested in finding out how much your TV will cost you per month or year in electricity but how in the heck will you figure that out? Simple, check out this extremely cool little gadget called the Kill-a-watt Electricity Usage Monitor.

I picked one of these up for my father for Christmas last year and ever since then he’s been running around the house plugging everything in sight into it.

I highly recommend you check the Kill-a-Watt out if you’re remotely interested in where your money is going every month. It will really help you to understand where the power is being used and how you can start cutting back.

Take a look at this great video below featuring the Kill-a-Watt (Discovery Channel – Green Gadgets).

Our Story:

We’ve set up numerous power strips around our house since realizing how much energy we were wasting on a daily basis. Any and every device that we doesn’t necessarily need to be running over night is plugged into a power strip and switched off before bed. Since we started doing this over two and a half years ago we have cut anywhere between $60 (1st year) and $80 per month off of our electricity bill.

We save so much energy that we now receive Home Energy Reports from National Grid (our electric company) letting us know that we’ve used up to 44%, 46%, and even 51% less energy than our EFFICIENT neighbors.

(Report shown from 2010)

Remember, this isn’t 46% less than our neighbors as a whole, this is 46% less than our EFFICIENT neighbors! That’s some serious energy savings if you ask me!

Neighbor Efficiency Rank:

Check out this report that we just received in the mail a few days ago called the Neighbor Efficiency Report.

(Neighbor Efficiency Report 2011)

This report claims that we are ranked #3 of 100 efficient neighbors over the course of the last 6 months. Call me a geek, but that’s some pretty exciting stuff…

Over the course of the last two months we have used 37% LESS electricity than our most efficient neighbors. Yeah, we’re a little off track from last year but we now know exactly where we went wrong this past winter. We picked up a space heater which we left either in the main room or the bathroom and we would sometimes leave it running all day/night. We thought that the unit we purchased was pretty energy efficient until we got our electric bill. I’m not saying that it was outrageous money, but I will say it was a lot more than we’re used to paying around here. Lesson learned!

Are you Ready to Start Saving Money?

How high is your electric bill these days? Maybe you have no idea what an electric bill should cost, so you just simply pay your bill and move on. Do yourself a favor and attempt to implement a few Power Strips in your home.

You could be saving yourself an extra $500-1000/year if your diligent enough about it. Why throw money at your electric company when you could be using it for better things, like um… Food, or better yet Traveling!

Did you know: Up to 20% of the electricity used in the United States is wasted by you evil Energy Vampires!

Well, hopefully after reading this article you’re now working on becoming an ex-Energy Vampire! ;)

If you enjoyed this article, please share it with your friends and family. Also, please be sure to leave a comment below with your best energy saving tips!