Early in the morning when most people are sleeping and barely any major appliances are running, chances are a significant amount of power is being consumed.
This happens due to what energy researchers call the “miscellaneous electrical load,” or MEL, which consists of various electronics and other items that are not lighting, heating and cooling or major appliances. Most of these devices spend a bulk of time in standby mode, while others are busy communicating wirelessly all the time.
“You can start spotting a time, depending on the home, where you can just see the minimum power consumption, and it’s really surprising how much gets consumed during that period,” said Alan Meier, an expert on technologies at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who recommends checking power usage at 3 am, according to The Washington Post.
A recent paper in the journal Energy Research and Social Science states that devices in standby mode use 4 to 12 percent of the total power used in a home. The 2012 national average monthly electricity bill was $107.28, according to the Post. This puts the average cost of miscellaneous electronics and objects at $4 to $13 per month or $48 to $156 annually.
It’s not any one device that causes a spike in power usage when nobody’s awake to use electronics – it’s the combination of multiple devices.
While in-home appliances, such as refrigerators, have become much more energy efficient throughout the years, the miscellaneous electrical load remains a category of energy use that continues to rise.
Another issue, Meier said, is the quantity of consumer electronic devices that are performing increasing wireless communications.
“A lot more devices have network connections, so that they’re constantly talking to the Internet in one way or another,” Meier said, according to the Post.
Although wireless electronics contribute to the MEL of many homes, other items that also play a role include home automatic sprinkler systems, home aquariums and a range of others. But devices that are part of a home’s load vary. (For instance, not everyone has a home aquarium.)
To address this type of energy waste, Joseph Burgett from Clemson University offers a solution in Energy Research and Social Science called a whole house switch where everything in the home can be turned off wirelessly.
But Meier suggests a more policy-oriented solution by changing the way manufacturers design many consumer electronics.
“The cheapest way is to go upstream and get the manufacturers to do as much of that as possible, because once you’ve bought it, you’re basically stuck,” he said.
(With reports from The Washington Post)
(www.asianjournal.com)
(LA Weekend February 14-17, 2015 Sec. D pg.2)
