Power Bricks aka Wall Warts

We all have power supplies littered with little power bricks.  These wall warts can constantly jack up your power bill, even when items are not in use, hence the term vampire or phantom power use. Lawrence Berkley National Labs estimates that 10% of residential power use is wasted toward this.  Older power bricks are also not very efficient in converting AC power to DC power, causing waste.

We haveve covered power use by technology products in the past, including use of a Kill a watt to measure power consumption.   Yes, just unplugging them or turning off the power strip they are plugged into will work.

New devices now come with power saving power bricks that were required July 1, 2006 by the California’s California Energy Commission or CEC regulation, as well as the federal government’s Energy Independence and Security Act of July 1, 2008.

You should see an “Efficiency Level IV” tag on the brick that have very low “no load power consumption”.  You could even replace old power supplies with these newer ones.  They should draw a maximum of 0.75 watts when in No Load mode.  Energy Star 1.1 requires minimum power efficiency of 80%, while a future 2.0 version will up it to 87%.

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Posted on December 26th, 2008
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