Vampire Calculations – EVST 100: Intro to the Environment

Since my challenge is a rather small, habitual change I have found it to be fairly difficult. When I wake up in the morning and unplug my phone from the charger I usually don’t instantly unplug the charger also. It is when I am in the process of getting ready or when I am about to walk out the door, that I realize there are things I need to unplug before I leave. I am hoping as this challenge continues that it will become more natural for me to unplug things while in the process of unplugging the things they charge or when I finish using them. While I will admit there are a few times I have forgotten to unplug things before leaving my room, I have in general made a pretty good improvement in eliminating some of the vampire power I used to allow.

After doing some research and seeing what this sort of small change can do for the environment, I have been able to find encouraging information that what I am doing is making a difference no matter how small. The website I found calculates annual energy costs based on your vampire power so I calculated what I thought to be my previous behavior verse my current, improved behavior. I calculated at a rate of 10 cents per kwh since that appears to be the average cost of power in Easton. Previously, keep in mind that I am a college student without that many things to plug in, my annual cost would have been $39.86. With the changes I have made for my challenge my current annual cost is now $29.78. This tells me that I have successfully cut out about 25% of the vampire power I used to consume.

This vampire calculator also showed me what things I can change to further decrease my annual kwh consumption. The remainder of my cost was coming from a plugged in TV and a plugged in DVD player. I think I could very easily unplug these devices, and this would greatly decrease my vampire power consumption. Unplugging these devices would make my challenge even more successful and and increase the potential sustainability implications of my behavior change. This site expressed that 5-10% of household energy costs come from vampire power, so if more people made changes like this they would find their energy costs to greatly decrease and we would see a noticable drop in energy consumption and carbon footprint.

http://www.green.harvard.edu/tools-resources/green-tip/eliminate-vampire-power

Rachel Barron says:

April 22, 2014 at 7:19 pm

I think the “vampire calculator” is a great way to monitor your usage. I am actually looking forward to trying it out myself. The articles I found were slightly opposite in they said that unplugging really doesn’t save that much in the grand scheme of things so it is interesting to find out that you found an article with the complete opposite perspective.

Lia Embil says:

April 22, 2014 at 8:25 pm

This is a GREAT way to monitor and reduce your energy usage. I too have a lot of trouble with pulling out my plugs. I never usually pull out my charger plug unless I need to take it with me somewhere. It is just more convenient. And this is the problem with people, we are always looking for conveniency when in fact if everyone just put in a little effort, we could make a huge difference.

I think if everyone knew about this vampire calculator, that company could put an economic incentive on it and then all people aware would go ahead and use it. This would create a drastic difference in energy consumption. Great post!

Liam Kearney says:

April 23, 2014 at 2:30 am

I think this is a great idea Ginny. We both have been entertaining the same idea of just unplugging an entire power strip to eliminate all the wasted energy. Unfortunately I have much to unplug I think by both of us recording our progress it will be interesting to see how successful we are throughout this sustainability challenge. It will be great to see if we make a change in our behavior than we may see in a change in the community around us. Like you, I am trying to create and consistently stick to the good habits. Good luck and I hope you overcome all the obstacles in your way.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply