Our Creative Energy Switch Design

By Robert Schinske, Matt Iacovelli, Cole Weber, Zach Muzzarelli

What is Standby Energy?

Standby

energy is a name for the energy used to power an appliance that is not in use. power is also commonly known as vampire power, vampire draw, phantom load, or leaking electricity.

Standby

Did you know?

We found that the average U.S. family in 2008 spend $2,200 on energy a year for their house.

Almost 20% of the energy used by an appliance is used on standby electricity. When your device is pugged into the wall it uses this energy pointlessly which adds to the total amount of money spent and energy used.
In 2012, the US generated 4054 billion kilowatt-hours. This is enough to power 332 nuclear power plants for 10 years!

Standby energy facts

TVs, VCRs, and DVDs can use up to 85% of their daily energy on standby. If all households avoided standby consumption we could save about 120 million kilowatt hours per year, or the annual consumption of more than 24,000 households. Leaving a phone charger plugged in but not in use for one week consumes enough energy to boil one full kettle to cook one microwave meal or make four slices of toast A typical American home has forty products constantly drawing power. Together these amount to almost 10% of residential electricity use.

What this energy could do

The average US household wastes over 1,300 kWh if electricity each year. To generate that amount of electricity would require over half a ton of coal or nearly 32 gallons if oil. The cost of vampire power wasted by plug in products in the US is $4-8 billion annually. Vampire power wasted in the US is enough to meet the electricity needs of Vietnam, Peru, and Greece. Plug in load is the fastest growing category of residential and commercial energy use in North America.

Out of country statistics

In Ireland, 10% of the average households energy bill is on standby energy. In an average Canadian home, 5 to 10 percent of the electricity consumed is used to power appliances and home electronics while these devices are on standby.

How much energy do household appliances use?

Appliances Stereo TV Video Recorder DVD Recorder Digital Top box Computer Monitor Laptop Broadband Modern Answering Machine Battery Charger Phone Charger Total When on (Watts) 22 100 13 12 6 130 70 29 14 3 14 5 418 Standby (Watts) 12 10 1 7 5 15 11 2 14 3 1 2 83

What is off?
The

only true way to eliminate standby power is to unplug the device. This eliminates all power flow to device from the source. With appliances like microwaves and T.Vs it is very difficult to unplug the devices. Our product eliminates this struggle.

Why we need to save electricity

Money Fire hazards Green house gasses Environmental hazards

Our Solution to this problem

Our

idea was to create a switch to eliminate the energy used by an electronic powered device when it is not even being used.

How it works
Our

product works because when used it cuts off the power circulation of the device by adding a switch to the positive wire, and shortening the negative wire. This has the same affect as unplugging the device but is a lot easier and is not as bad for the device.

Making the Product

We started by taking a five foot extension cord and striping both the positive and negative wires. We then cut the negative wire all the way down to the base and connecting it there with electrical tape. After that we cut the positive wire in the middle, and and added a switch in the center. We separated the sides of the positive wire with more electrical tape, and then wrapped the separated sides in the more electrical tape to give it an appearance of an extension cord again

Calls we made
First,

we called PG&E and they were not interested in our product. We learned that it could take a long time to find a company that would actually be interested in our product. we called Belkin who actually was impressed and we got their main office but we havent called them yet. It showed that we could possibly sell this product.

Second

Our product

The End