Okay, I did some googling, and found out that appliances and computers do indeed use electricity even when they are turned off! But I didn’t find anything about power bars using electricity (which doesn’t mean they don’t. If they do use electricity when turned off, it’s probably a very minute amount. Anything that is plugged into an outlet, there is some transfer of energy there, and the appliances, even when turned off, are draining power. Better thing to do is just unplug appliances, computers, synthesizers, whatever, when not in use, in order to save electricity and save money!) On the Energy Alternatives website, they refer to this energy drainage as “Phantom Loads”.
With all our discussion I’m starting to wonder… what is more environment friendly?
Read an article on my computer?
or print it out and shutdown my computer??
Anyone has an answer for me?
Assuming we can believe the website, it says turning off the powerbar is a good way to avoid the phantom loads. 🙂 I guess I should turn off my power bar more often then (I guess I might want to take my clock off it first…)
well of course it would be more environmentally friendly to simply read the article on the web because if you choose to print it, there are other sources of pollution associated with making that hard copy