By Hasan Ali
LAHORE: People in the city are consuming electricity irrespective of the power crisis that has hit the country for a year now. Extra lights on high-rise buildings and restaurants are still lit up.
WAPDA has asked consumers to use energy-savers and switch off unnecessary lights, but a large number of people pay no attention to the authority’s outcry. The authority has, however, also failed to raise awareness on the home appliances, called ‘vampires’, that consume electricity even on standby mode.
‘Vampire’ concept: Electric home appliances that feature timers, clocks, memory and remote on and off switches consume power like ‘vampires’. Vampire power, also called standby power, phantom load, or leaking electricity, refers to the electric power consumed by electronic appliances while they are switched off or in a standby mode. A very common ‘electricity vampire’ is a power adapter which has no power-off switch. While this consumption of power may be used to provide useful functions to users in appliances such as remote controls and digital clocks, most of the power consumed by non-operational devices is considered wasted. CNN quoted a study in October 2007 which revealed that about 5 percent of electricity in the US is consumed by electronic gadgets that run in standby mode. No such study has, however, been conducted in Pakistan yet. Continue reading
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