What Would Oprah Do To Stop Phantom Loads? Use a Smart Strip Power Strip, of course.
Parting ways with Kermit to assert that “it’s easy being green”, Oprah advocates using a Smart Strip Power Strip to automatically eliminate “phantom loads” associated with your computer or home entertainment center.
What’s a phantom load? Well, every device that you’ve got plugged in is always drawing electricity - whether it’s a lot or a little, this continuous, low-level energy use adds up over 24 hours of each day. The Department of Energy estimates that as much as 43 billion kWh each year is wasted by phantom loads throughout the United States. According to DoE, 75% of the electricity used to power home electronics is consumed while the products are turned off!
The Smart Strip can help you eliminate the phantom loads of your peripheral devices - most commonly those associated with your computers or home entertainment centers. How? Simple.
Choose a “control device” - such as your TV or computer - that’s at the center of a system. You plug it into the blue control outlet.
Your peripheral devices are the ones that the Smart Strip aims to address - the DVD player, the VCR, the speakers, the computer monitor, the printer, so on and so forth. These are the items that don’t need to be on when the “control device” isn’t on - they’re the “switched” devices. Plug them into the white outlets. When’s the last time you used your DVD player while your TV was off? Your Smart Strip will automatically switch off everything in the white, “switched outlets” whenever what’s in the “control outlet” turns off. It cuts all power, so you’re not wasting money and energy to supply “stand-by” power unnecessarily.
The red outlets are the “constant hot” outlets. What’s in there always has power. You might use these red outlets for your wireless router or TiVo - something you don’t want to turn off just because the control device turns off.
We’ve made a helpful Smart Strips video that’s available on our site (including in high definition video), and on both YouTube and Brightcove. It’s a great way to learn how to eliminate your phantom loads with a Smart Strip - watch how we set-up a Smart Strip with our TV.
Using a Smart Strip is not just smart for your world - it’s smart for your wallet, too. You could pay as little as $5 to $7 for a standard surge protector, but it’ll end up costing you. You probably pay a couple dozen dollars a year (or more!) to keep your peripheral devices on stand-by unnecessarily.
We calculate that using a Smart Strip will probably save you $25 or more each year on your energy bills.
We carry at least two models (one big, one small) of Smart Strips at all time - they’ll save you a bundle by themselves, and even more if you use them to start building your own Earth Aid Kit!
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Smart Strip SCG4 Power Strip |
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Smart Strip LCG3 Power Strip |
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great idea! makes it easy to save $$. The video is fun and makes it easy to understand.