TUCSON, Ariz. — Vampires do exist, and not only in Transylvania, they’re lurking behind your power cords. They suck your power and are in no way afraid of garlic.

Vampire power, or its official title, standby power, is the energy appliances use when they are on stand-by or not in use, according to grinningplanet.com . Gadgets and all sorts of everyday power tools use this type of energy.

The Internal Energy Agency estimates that United States citizens lose nearly $ 4 billion dollars a year to stand-by power and that the world wastes up to 400 terawatts of energy per year.

Some stand-by power is critical to devices but a lot of it is just wasted, according to the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.

Each American home could have 10 to 50 products that rely on stand-by power according to research done by the Department of Energy.

“I try my best to un-plug all of my bathroom appliances before I leave,” said Cristal Wilber, a student at the University of Arizona.

Wilber consciously tries to un-plug all of her small electronics and puts her computer on stand-by. She said she does this more for her own peace-of-mind and not necessarily to save power.

“I get paranoid if I leave things plugged in, and I know it wastes a lot of energy,” she said.

Although she does admit to leaving her phone charger plugged in.
The list of devices that use standby power reads like a list of electronics found in a college dorm room. With so many students living in dorms on university campuses, many are unaware of the amount of energy they’re draining.

“Um, no,” said Alisha Siegel, a freshman living at Colonia de La Paz. “I’ll turn off my computer at night, but that’s about it. Everything else is usually on.”

James Stevenson, a desk assistant at Arizona-Sonora dorm said conserving energy is brought up during weekly meetings.

“Sometimes we talk about that stuff, but not that (standby power),” Stevenson said.

One of the main motivations towards conserving energy for the everyday consumer the electric bill that without fail appears each month, a variable that students living in dorms do not have to worry about.

“I think that some people might start turning them (appliances) all the way off, but not most because they don’t pay for it,” said pre-business freshman Kat Rutledge, a resident living in Coronado Hall.

Tucson Electric Power spokesman Joseph Barrios said TEP has not done any independent research on how much energy is wasted on stand-by power.

“We have done reading of meters on specific houses but only on a small scale,” Barrios said.

Barrios said TEP uses research from the California Public Utilities Commission .

The TEP website has links to the Energy Efficiency World , a tool to help Tucson consumers figure out how to save money on their energy bills.

“We urge our customers to conserve when possible,” Barrios said.

He said the fewer appliances the better and there isn’t one thing to do that is easier than another to take the sting out of a consumer’s energy bills.

Liz Zadovsky inherited a brand new position as the coordinator of sustainability education for dorms at the University of Arizona. So far she said the sustainability team has done passive things like putting up flyers promoting conservation, but there’s only so much they can do within the first year to get students to minimize their impacts.

“I think it is a challenge because people don’t feel a sense of ownership. They’re not paying a monthly bill for it so it’s hard to associate the ramifications and generate some personal responsibility,” Zadovsky said.



The two largest dorms on the Arizona campus, Arizona-Sonora and Coronado alone house 1,200 students. It’s safe to assume each of these students brings with them to the dorms a DVD player, averaging 4.2 watts per hours, microwave oven averaging 2.9 watts per hour and printer averaging 5 watts per hours according to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

During 15 hours of inactivity due to sleep and classes, these two dorms could be wasting 217,800 watts of energy per day because of standby power.

Zadovsky said her team has also made thinking about living environmentally friendly a part of the resident assistant training process to generate some of those feelings from staff in the dorms.

“I don’t feel it’s impossible,” Zadovsky said. “With the creation of my position we’re starting to get people to think about their choices on a daily basis.”

The Berkeley Lab has home tours . on their Web site; here is a list of the most common leaking electronics in the typical American home: a total of 74 watts of electricity was leaking from the home each day.