Standby Power
Standby power, informally called vampire or phantom power, refers to the electricity consumed by many appliances when they are switched off or in standby mode. The typical standby power per appliance is low (typically from less than 1 to 25 W), but, when multiplied by the billions of appliances in houses and in commercial buildings, standby losses represent a significant fraction of total world electricity use. According to Alan Meier, a staff scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, standby power before the One Watt Initiative proposals were implemented as regulations accounted for as much as 10% of household power consumption. A study in France found that standby power accounted for 7% of total residential consumption, and other studies put the proportion of consumption due to standby power at 13%.
The IEA estimated in 2007 that standby produced 1% of the world's carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. To put the figure into context, total air travel contributes less than 3% of global CO2 emissions.
Standby power can be reduced by technological means, reducing power used without affecting functionality, and by changing users' operating procedures; this is discussed in the relevant article.
Read more about this topic: One Watt Initiative
Famous quotes containing the word power:
“It cannot be denied that for a society which has to create scarcity to save its members from starvation, to whom abundance spells disaster, and to whom unlimited energy means unlimited power for war and destruction, there is an ominous cloud in the distance though at present it be no bigger than a man’s hand.”
—Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944)