Slaying the Energy Vampires

At first, it wasn't generating any numbers that seemed particularly impressive. My iPod charger didn't use enough electricity to register a reading when it wasn't actually recharging. The base for a General Electric(GE Quote) cordless phone nibbled a mere 20 cents a month, and two LG cellphone chargers wasted electricity at a rate of about 80 cents a month combined when attached to fully charged phones.

But then I went through two home offices testing PCs, laptops and peripherals such as printers, routers and cable modems, and headed to the den to test the TV, DVD player and set-top box.

That's when things started to add up.

My true vampires, the devices that use power even when they aren't in use, ran up charges at a rate of more than $10 a month, or 13% of our average $80 electric bill -- not as bad as I feared, but still, that's $120 a year I could put to other use. Far scarier was the tally for those devices we leave plugged in, turned on or on standby when we don't need to: nearly $46 or 57% of our electric bill.

Ouch!

Some of the biggest culprits overall included a cable box made by Scientific Atlanta, a unit of Cisco(CSCO Quote), which uses the same amount of electricity whether it's on or off; the Sony(SNE Quote) TV, which guzzles power at a rate of $12.29 a month when we leave it on standby; and a Goldstar DVD player that uses half as much power when it's turned off as it does when we're actually watching a DVD.