Digital Bits Skeptic

By Andy Kaiser 
Article ID: 122

 

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On April 20, 2007, Oprah had her Earth Day episode, “Going Green 101: Resources for your family”.

This was a show about energy savings and environmental friendliness. It included tips like using washable cloth napkins rather than throwing away paper napkins, and using compact florescent light bulbs (CFLs) rather than incandescents. These are good tips that certainly make sense in the long run for anyone concerned about saving electricity and improving the environment.

However, several minutes were spent on the show talking about something I’d classify as misinformation, or to be more blunt, just plain wrong. This of course happens all the time with any media organization. No one can be expected to be 100% accurate, and when the media gets it wrong, consumers have an obligation to speak out. The alternative leads to shoddy journalism: we get reporting with no fact-checking, or unchecked sensationalist reporting. Making claims for the environment or consumer protection becomes even worse if the facts aren’t even right, since misinformation will only spread.

This article answers the following questions:

Do household appliances use 40% of our electricity costs, even when turned off?

Will changing to incandescent lights save $50 on an electric bill?

How much electricity do household appliances use?

How much money does my appliance cost to operate?

The first two questions were specific issues raised during the show, and are cultural assumptions people spread without any fact checking. The last two questions are often asked when you learn the answers to the first two.

In order to begin answering these questions, I needed two things:

First, I needed to know how much electricity costs. Looking at my latest energy bill was the answer: I’m billed just over nine cents per kilowatt hour. For simplicity, I’ve rounded this up to ten cents per kilowatt hour. It costs me about $0.10 for every 1000 watts running for one hour.

Second, I needed a way to measure the wattage that a particular device uses. My tool of choice was the Kill-O-Watt P4460 Electricity Usage Monitor. This is a small box that you plug into a wall socket. Then you plug a device into the Kill-O-Watt. Then the Kill-O-Watt will tell you, among other things, how many watts are being consumed, and how much money that device costs to power.

With this information, we’re set to address the first question:

Do household appliances use 40% of our electricity costs, even when turned off?

Here’s dialog from the show:

Simran Sethi (an environmental expert):  …what we often have is we’re drawing a lot of energy when we have products plugged in, appliances plugged in but not actually have them on.

Oprah:  We all know that, right? That when the toasters plugged and the coffeemaker’s plugged in, it’s drawing energy even if you’re not using it.

Simran Sethi:  About forty percent of the power even though we’re not using it. So we’re spending all this money to power things that are on in the off position.

Oprah: We did not know that. Isn’t this a big lesson? Okay. This is great. Yeah, I’ve started doing that, unplugging the toaster, because it’s drawing about forty. I didn’t know it was forty percent.

Simran Sethi: We call it vampire standby power.

Oprah: And the TV and all the things that are plugged in are drawing energy.

Simran Sethi:  Exactly.

The case has been stated pretty clearly: Not only are appliances costing us 40% of our electric bill, but many devices use a considerable amount of energy even when turned off. Based on the context of the discussion, they’re talking about small appliances like TVs and toasters, not refrigerators or ovens.

So let’s test. Armed with the Kill-O-Watt, I went around my house and measured the wattage consumption for most of my small appliances, including the ones mentioned above. Click the below links to download in full detail, or read on for the summary.

Power consumption results (PDF)
Power consumption results (JPG)

The result: Small appliances do NOT cost us anywhere near 40% of our electric bill when turned off. The energy cost isn’t even a significant portion of our electric bill. Here’s a screen shot taken from the above documents, showing the wattage when on, off, and associated costs for various appliances:

I also threw in a few devices like a boom box, lights, humidifier, fan, cordless drill and phone chargers, and other electronics I use often.

Notice the numbers in the column labeled “Cost per day when turned off”. This is the daily amount it costs me to leave those devices plugged in and turned off. My total electric cost is $0.15 per day, or $4.50 per month.

The energy bill I used to make this analysis totaled about $75. Forty percent of my bill would be $30. So, to answer the question “Do household appliances still use 40% of our electricity when turned off?” The answer is “No. Not even close.” Most appliances when turned off use zero electricity. And the “vampire standby power” mentioned above is barely noticeable. The moral: Do not worry about power consumption from your small appliances.

Will changing to incandescent lights save $50 on an electric bill?

Here’s the appropriate dialog from the Oprah show. She had this exchange with an audience member when the topic came to compact fluorescent light bulbs, and how they’re an energy savings over incandescent bulbs:

Oprah: You’re nodding, ’cause did you do it? And you noticed the savings in a month?

Audience member: Yes. I love it.

Oprah: How much? Really?

Audience member: Yes, over $50 a month for me here.

Oprah: Over $50 a month on the bill?

Audience member: Yeah, during the wintertime, yes. Yes.

Audience member: But I live in California so that’s a big deal.

Oprah: Okay.

Fifty dollars on an electric bill? That’s a pretty big deal even if you’re not in California!

I’m going to use myself as an example. My family burns lights pretty often. I’d say we do so more than most, due to the configuration of our kitchen: As you can see by the wattage analysis documents above, we have a lot of incandescent lighting (due to many recessed lights in our kitchen). There’s a total of twelve lights burning 725 watts when turned on. If we were to leave those lights on for a full day, it would cost $1.74 per day.

Being very generous with our estimate, let’s say those lights are left on for twelve hours per day, costing $0.87 per day, or $26.10 per month.

Let’s say we converted all those lights to energy-friendly CFL lights. Based on other lights in my house, I’ve used a 30-watt CFL to replace a 150-watt incandescent bulb. Setting up the ratio (725 x 30 / 150), I would need 145 watts of CFL bulbs to replace my 725 watts of incandescents.

145 watts would cost me $0.35 per day, or $10.50 per month.

If I converted twelve incandescent lights to CFL lights, I’d spend $10.50 per month in electric costs versus $26.10. That’s $15.60 a month in savings. Not so bad, but there are a couple of secondary questions:

How much would twelve 30-watt CFL lights cost? Estimate $8 each, or $96 total.

Have I saved the quoted $50 per month on my electric bill? No. I’ve saved $15.60 per month at a cost of $96. The investment will start paying for itself in about 7 months, assuming you replace 12 bulbs that you run 12 hours per day.

How much electricity do household appliances use?

Not as much as you think. Or, put another way, even those high-wattage devices (in my case the toaster oven, microwave, kitchen lights and humidifier) only use electricity when turned on. And when they’re turned on, the cost to me is still just pennies per hour. Even when I use my most electrically expensive device – the toaster oven – the electric cost is just $0.27 per hour.

How much money does my appliance cost to operate?

In order to find this answer, you need to know the following:

1) What does your electric company charge you per kilowatt hour? This information will be on your latest electric bill. The easiest way is to take your total bill amount and divide by the number of kilowatt hours you were billed for. Then divide that number by 1000. In my case, this was just over $0.09 per KWH.

2) How many watts does your device use when plugged in? Often this is printed on the device itself. If it’s not, you can use a wattage measuring device like the Kill-O-Watt.

Once you have this information, take your device wattage, multiply it by 24, divide by 1000, and multiply by the KWH charge from your electric company.

If you’d rather not do the math by hand, then use this energy cost calculator to determine your wattage cost.

Conclusion

I’m picking on Oprah because of her reach and the amount of people in her worldwide audience. If anyone’s heard about this issue of appliances sucking up energy when turned off, it’s a good chance they’ve heard Oprah referenced with it, or learned it from her “Green 101” show. I actually like Oprah a lot. She does a lot of good for people who need help, and the world is much better off with her in it. But there have been cases where she doesn’t think critically or skeptically about certain issues, or doesn’t have time or opportunity to critically analyze claims in a live show. This is one of those times.

So what CAN we do to save electricity?

1) In my experience, with the equipment in my house, unplugging a toaster isn’t any help. Focus instead on the big things: Heating and cooling. These are the heavy power users (whether electric or gas), and are costing you the most money.

2) On a smaller scale, light bulb conversion from incandescent to CFL is a good thing. It’s not as impressive as claimed on the Oprah show (as least not for this self-proclaimed above-average electric user), but does make an eventual difference. If you’re willing to pay a chunk of money up front, you will see a savings. (Just make sure you settle on a good CFL bulb before you purchase twenty more!)

Saving electricity is good. We shouldn’t be wasteful. I don’t have a problem with that. My issue is when people make incorrect claims to support a point. In a worst case, they’re lying with “the end justifies the means” reasoning. In a best case, they’re telling people to do something that’s either not necessary or a waste of time, effort and money. At the very least, it’s bad journalism.

As a great musician once sang, “everything you know is wrong”. That’s not completely true, but it’s a good start: if you make a claim, be able to back it up.

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