One area many of us miss in our attack on energy usage are the phantom loads created by electrical devices when they are turned off.  It can be an annoyance, however, to unplug everything in our homes.  I’ve attacked this problem by determining which appliances are causing the largest power drains and only elminating the ones that cause the largest energy drain.

The tool I used is a gadget I purchased a while back — Kill-A-Watt. This cool device plugs into a normal wall receptacle and measures the amount of electricity used by anything plugged into the Kill-A-Watt.

The first thing I used to test the Kill-A-Watt device was my computer desk.  I admit that in the past we left the computer running too much. I had no idea how much it was costing us to keep the computer on for 8-10 hours per day.  Well now I do.  After doing the calculations, I found it was costing around $5 per month to NOT use my computer.  The step to correct this problem was easy — plug everything into the same power strip and just turn off the power strip at night to insure that no phantom loads are drawing power.  At first I included my DSL modem and wireless router on the power strip, but after a few days I realized this was causing too many problems with my internet connection, so I leave them plugged in all the time.

It may seem like a small thing, but just by making sure your computer is really turned “off” you can save $50-$60 per year.