he “off” switch is lying to you. When electric appliances are plugged in but turned off, they are usually in standby mode, many waiting to respond to a remote control or recharging a battery on a cordless device. That continual drain can be anywhere between 5 and 26 percent of a household’s electricity bill.
Representatives from 25 countries who are members of the International Energy Agency met in Tokyo on Feb. 7 and 8 to discuss how manufacturers of electronics can be prodded into designing appliances that run at a standby power of one watt or less. At the workshop, Australia, Japan and the European Union announced that their governments had made agreements with manufacturers to comply with one-watt goals. The United States Department of Energy has not yet mandated the one-watt goal.
Leaking electricity is steadily growing as people accumulate multiple televisions, cable boxes and computers. Limiting standby energy can save consumers money, decrease carbon emissions into the environment and modestly contribute to solving electricity problems in California and other states, according to Dr. Alan Meier, a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, who proposed the one-watt target in 1997.
If all the appliances in the rooms pictured here had one-watt standby power, the power wasted in a month would be reduced by 86.3 kilowatt-hours, or 85 percent.
