Kentucky environmental attorney Sanders says energy vampires are stealing your money and wasting out national energy supply.

Most experts agree that standby power is electricity used by appliances and equipment while they are switched off or not performing their primary function. That power is consumed by power supplies (the black cubes—sometimes called "vampires"—converting AC into DC), the circuits and sensors needed to receive a remote signal, soft keypads and displays including miscellaneous LED status lights. Standby power use is also caused by circuits that continue to be energized even when the device is "off".

Sometimes, appliances in stand-by mode use as much power off as when they are turned on! For example, computer printers are one of the big energy wasters, some of them drawing 11.5 watts when idling. Some TVs and video cassette recorders draw almost as much, while set-top cable boxes can draw twice that many watts when the box is turned off. Such appliances are energy vampires that are stealing your money.

A large number of electrical products - from air conditioners to VCRs - cannot be switched completely off without unplugging the device or turning it off at a power strip. These products draw power 24 hours a day, often without the knowledge of the consumer. This mode is called “stand-by power,” but it makes these products “energy vampires.”

According to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in particularly inefficient designs, the stand-by power use can be as high as 15 or 30 watts. For a single appliance, this may not seem like much, but when we add up the power use of the billions of appliances in the United States, the power consumption of appliances that are not being used is substantial.

The study found that the average California home pays between $50 and $70 every year to keep those little red lights burning, the clocks ticking and the electronics humming while the appliances go unused. Eliminating this standby or “leaking” electricity could save households between six and 26 percent on an average monthly electricity bill.

The federal government’s webpage on this topic is http://standby.lbl.gov/

I suggest you call or write your Congressman and the Whitehouse and demand an end to these energy vampires that are stealing your money.