To paraphrase an old adage...

"Watch the watts and the kilowatts will take care of themselves"

Agree that cold draw is small for most things, but the load is more like s 1-10 watts per rather than 1/4 watt. A typical 100 milliamp (1/10th amp) draw @ 120V = 12 watts per hour and modern homes have lots of these devices. Just about anything with a digital control will be drawing something. Clocks and those ubiquitous transformers are also eating away at the watts.

It may be only a couple kilowatt-hours per day per home, but that's a lot of wasted kilowatt-hours when added up nationally. Now I'm not suggesting that everybody unplug their clock when you leave the house/RV, but I'll bet there are a lot of things that each of us could do if we paid more attention to these "cold draws".

Leaving a large inverter on 24/7 is one of those cold draws that have a small cost that adds up.

You can easily check the amperage draw of any plug in appliance with a Kill A Watt.

I bought one for >$20.

-Tom

Our local utility charges a little over 9 cents per kilowatthour (thats 1000 watts of power for the period of one hour) To make this simple we will use 10 cents per kilowatthour. To reduce your bill by $5 you will need to save 50 kilowatthours, At worst case the clocks and other parasitic loads will use 1 kwh in a month. The most economical and sensible way to save energy is to reduce the large loads, such as heating and air conditioning, waterheating, and the smallest of these, lighting, (unless you have a heck of a lot of chandoliers and security lighting) Turning the themostat back a couple of degrees in the winter, up in the summer, turning down the thermostat on the water heater will produce the greatest gains. Timers on water heaters do not pay off unless you do not use hot water very often. Instantanious water heaters are more efficent than standard tank type water heaters, but the technoligy is still lacking as temperature control is spotty at times as water flow changes. It's the radical enviromentalist that wants to spend millions to save 10%, when thousands can save 9.8%. Many power plants can be upgraded with more efficent turbines increasing output for a couple of mil, but the government requires a total overhaul of the plant when a major component is changed, costing much more, so the utility cannot justify the cost.

quote:

Originally posted by doc:
Sounds sort of alarmist to me. I do know the 'instant on' appliances use power while off. However this 'energized wire' bit sounds like so much equine used hay.

I believe it came from an Oprah episode a while back, so any suprise, really?

If a clock draws 12 watts, then the clock in your car would draw 1 amp, which would run the battery down fairly quickly, LCD watches even at 1 watt would kill the watch battery quickly. A super bright LED only draws a quarter of a watt. Don't sweat the little stuff, reducing the larger loads has a far greater payoff.

quote:

Originally posted by Joseph C. McKenzie:
I believe there was something also mentioned about just having the extra plugs plugged in will still cause that much more copper wire to be energized, even if the unit is off and has no phantom draws.

I dont think so. Get a multimeter and do an amperage draw you will find 0.