I'm not very handy when it comes to home improvement projects, so my wife watched nervously as I silently entered our bedroom with a cordless drill. No need to fret, though-- I was merely making a cosmetic change to a small piece of furniture in the name of energy efficiency. Given the outcome of this week's trial with the Kill-A-Watt, it became apparent I needed to plug all my charging cables into a power strip to prevent the constant streaming of standby power. But I didn't relish the thought of snuggling up next to a sprawling electrical octopus in my bedroom. Hence the need for a little remodeling.
Using a boring bit, I drilled a small hole in the back of my nightstand through which I could feed the cord to my power strip. Having plugged the unit into the outlet behind my bed, I could then nestle the strip into the top drawer of my night stand. With all the peripherals connected, I can now easily slide open the drawer and turn the unit on or off according to my needs. Power on demand without unnecessary waste!
So what's the payoff? In my last post, I calculated the energy consumption of the tested gadgets to be 0.07 kWh a day, or over 25 kWh per year. Assuming that I will now use the strip for only approximately one hour each day, the total daily use will be roughly .003 kWh. Over the course of the remaining year (365 days - 14 days = 351 days remaining) , that will come out to just over 1 kWh of use for the year-- a savings of roughly 24 kWh for 2011. Victory is mine!
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