If you want to trim the size of your electric bill, you might want to reduce what’s
known as “plugload.” Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Transcript
If you want to trim the size of your electric bill, you might want to reduce what’s
known as “plug load.” Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Many homes have electronic devices that are always on… always draining
electricity. Phone chargers, DVD clocks, computers, and so on. Put together, all
of the things that are plugged in contribute to plugload, a fast-growing segment
of energy consumption.
It’s caught the eye of energy conservation officials such as Kathy Kuntz:
“Right now, nationally, we estimate that about 15 percent of a homeowners
electric bill is plugload…that’s a bunch of little individual appliance decisions, so
there’s a lot of little behavioral pieces of that and we’re really trying to understand how
dp we affect that.”
Energy conservation agencies say one remedy is to put several things with a
plugload into a power strip and turn that off when you leave a room for long
periods of time or go to sleep.
For the Environment Report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.