With preparations for Halloween in full-swing around Seattle, I’ve been hearing and sharing thoughts of ghouls and goblins, pirates and princesses with my kids, their friends, my friends and co-workers.

But for the purposes of THIS SPACE and its mission to help people take simple steps to conserve energy, protect the planet and save some money along the way, the image that keeps coming back to haunt me is a vampire.

In energy-speak, vampires are electronic devices that continue to suck electricity out of the wall socket after you push the “off” button.

That’s right, with many electronic devices -- especially those that use a remote control – “off” doesn’t really mean off. It means standby. The television, stereo, DVD player or other device continues to run some of its circuitry, waiting for a signal from the remote to turn on the rest.
Allowing your computer to drop into “standby” or “sleep” mode rather than performing a complete shutdown does the same thing.

Obviously, the energy used for any one device is not huge, but it does add up.
A quick scan of my home identified seven power-draining vampires. I’m not alone.
Research by the Lawrence Berkely National Laboratory (http://eetd.lbl.gov/EA/Reports/45967.pdf) shows that vampires in a typical household demand an average load of 67 watts. That’s about 6 percent of the total electricity load for the average Seattle resident. Over the course a year, that adds up to $46.54.

I consider that blood money.

That energy is not providing you with anything more than the convenience of starting your next use with the remote. For the eight (if you’re lucky) hours you’re sleeping it’s completely wasted.
You don’t have to keep wasting that energy. You can join me in driving a wooden stake through the hearts of the electricity vampires in your home.

My preferred option is to connect household electronics to a surge protector strip. When you’re done using them for the day and shut down, you would switch off the surge protector, denying the vampire its energy source.

With computers, make sure you perform a shut down rather than letting your machine go into sleep mode.

Or just unplug those devices from the outlet when you’re not using them.

The energy you save helps electric utilities avoid the need to build more power plants and keeps a little more of your hard-earned money in your wallet.

It might even be enough to splurge on the Halloween candy. No tricks, just treats.