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Vampire Electronics
Vampire electronics tap energy as your home sleeps

You’ve packed the car, loaded up the kids, mapped out your trip and made your reservations. All that remains is to enjoy every minute of a two-week vacation. As an added bonus, since your house essentially will sleep for 14 days, your utility bill should drop dramatically, right?

Not necessarily. You may be on vacation, but your home is still hard at work. Appliances like refrigerators, deep freezers, and water heaters consume power even when you’re not around. And your computers, TVs and DVD players, cordless phones and power tools are busy consuming energy, even when you’re not using them. This dormant or “vampire load” has an active appetite for your energy dollar.

You can pull the plug on vampire electronics. Here are a few suggestions to get you started.

First, look at your water heater. It’s designed to maintain the tank temperature, even when you’re not using water. Turn the temperature down or shut the heater off entirely to eliminate wasted energy.

The same rule applies to your refrigerator and freezers. To save energy dollars, you can empty and unplug them for the duration of your vacation.

Clocks, televisions, computers, VCRs, microwave ovens—any appliance that has an electronic readout or memory—consumes energy even while it’s not actively engaged. You can disconnect individual appliances, or if you’d like to shut off the entire house, you can turn off power at the main breaker. Keep in mind, this will eliminate the automatic timer features on your lights and VCR. Your fridge and freezers will defrost and the contents of your water heater will chill to room temperature. Without air conditioning, your home can heat to levels well above the outdoor temperatures. Heat that enters your home through the windows and ceiling can be trapped inside. This can be especially hard on candles or other temperature sensitive items around the house.

If you intend to leave your appliances connected and the power on, vacation is the perfect time to determine how much of your energy dollar goes to vampire electronics. Read your meter before you leave, then take a second reading when you return.

Although the percentage of your bill that goes toward vampire load will vary from season to season, this will give you an idea of how much energy your home consumes to maintain a constant “body temperature” and what your appliances consume just to stay “conscious.”

One last thing—you may want to let a neighbor know you’re leaving. If a storm leaves your area without power, your neighbor can let us know that your home is unattended, and we can verify that service has been restored to your home.

Now it’s time to hit the road.

Have a safe and enjoyable vacation.