How to Turn Off (in a good way)

Many years ago when I had an internship in Wyoming, I lived in a cabin that got its power from a generator. Now, this was something new to me, a child of suburbia, who was used to flipping a switch and having electricity flow freely. So, oblivious to the concept of phantom load, my roommates and I plugged in our alarm clocks, our coffee pots, our radios and CD players; we plugged it all in.

And then, one day, we returned to a lot of angry people in and around our cabin. It seems that we were to blame for burning out the generator and that no one in our little rural complex of cabins had any power.

You see, my friends, whenever something is plugged in, it uses electricity, even if it isn't "on." You probably know that your clock radio uses electricity because it's lit, but so does a lamp if it's plugged in, or a cell phone charger, or a radio, even if they are turned off. So all of our little toys that were plugged in were sucking electricity, just enough to cause the generator to turn on and off all day long. That explained the noise of a motor trying to start that we all heard, but ignored. What can I say? We were young and suburban.

So, after being chewed out by lots of older, fatter men, I learned to unplug everything when it wasn't in use including lamps, cell phone chargers, stereos, radios, etc. All of it uses electricity even when it's not on.

But here are some far hipper tips from TreeHugger:

1) Devices like the Kill-a-Watt and Wattson can point you to devices that attract the largest load, leading you to get...
2) A "smart" power strip like the Wattstopper Plug Load Control and Smart Strip Power Strip, that cut the power when your devices are off.
3) The Mini Power Minder has the smarts to shut off your computer’s peripherals and doodads when the computer itself is shut down.
4) Simply unplugging things like your cell phone charger, which is only in use a few minutes per day, will make a bigger difference than you'd think.
5) See How to Green Your Electricity to learn more about keeping phantoms, vampires and warts out of your electrical life.