This day in age, it’s almost impossible not to waste electricity.
But what’s a few watts here and there when compared to the truly BIG electricity wasters out there that we should REALLY be focusing on? We’ve compiled an exclusive list that breaks down the seven most-wanted offenders of wasted power. There’s probably nothing we can do about it, but SHAME ON THEM!
TOP 7 BIGGEST ELECTRICITY WASTERS
#7 – Supercolliders
The complex titanic underground installations known as supercolliders are one of the largest and most expensive scientific instruments on the planet. But what are they for? What do they do?
Apparently they’re supposed to help scientists unravel the mysteries of subatomic particle physics. But I haven’t heard about any major universe-altering revelations from CERN lately.
These monstrous facilities require a tremendous amount of power and they often operate independently on their very own electric grid, otherwise it might not be able to sustain the 10 – 100 MegaWatt range of power draw required to run the thing. Despite the steep construction costs, operational expense and absurd waste of electricity, we still have not unlocked the final chevron on the Stargate. For the record, a Stargate also uses a ridiculous amount of power, but that’s what Naquadah is for.
#6 – TV Peripherals (DVR’s, etc)
Most of us have at least one gizmo or technological wonder unit tethered to our TV sets, whether it be a DVR, video game console or Blu-Ray player. If you unplug all of those devices when you’re not using them, congratulations, you are a very energy-conscious consumer.
For the other 99% of us who leave them on, we’re responsible for wasting the same amount of electricity each year as six 500 MW power plants would produce, according to the website energyefficiencynews.com.
Basically, think of each power-sucking peripheral as another refrigerator. It uses roughly the same amount of power (especially if you’re using one of those fancy-shmancy High Definition boxes). This is one of those that we do actually have a semblance of control in regards to reducing energy waste. Energy Efficiency News estimates about 160 million of the vampiric gadgets currently accompany our TV’s nationwide, costing about $2 billion in wasted power. Do your part!
#5 – The DeLorean Time Machine
That’s right – I’m talking about the time-warping vessel that made an otherwise crappy, overpriced car into a legend. It runs on ordinary gasoline (or alcohol on some occasions), but if you’re planning on firing up the old Flux Capacitor, you’re also gonna need a modest 1.21 Gigawatts of electricity! Sure, that’s no sweat if you’re able to procure it in the form of stolen plutonium, but no matter the source, it’s a huge waste!
If the DeLorean pulled that kind of power off the public grid, it would waste an entire power plant’s worth of power (for the brief moment it’s being used at least), and black out about a million homes in the process. Why is it that time machines always waste so much electricity? Be a conscious consumer…. and when shopping for time machines look for the Energy Star logo.
#4 – Google’s ‘Les Paul’ Logo
Think this is an odd choice for this list? So did I, until I saw some interesting, if not peculiar, research on the matter. If you were online, and visited Google over the two day period where the search engine behemoth recently paid homage to Les Paul in the form of an interactive guitar logo, then you probably also played with it, and are now reduced to nothing more than an electricity-wasting statistic (yep, I’m guilty too).The fact that the logo was a playable mini-version of a digital guitar, complete with recording and play-back functions, didn’t make it any easier for Googlers to abstain from playing with the doo-dad.
Now about the ‘research’ I mentioned… According to a guy named Vikramjit Kakati, who is an engineer at the Indian Institute of Technology (and a holds a PhD, mind you), Google’s virtual guitar wasted about 10 Megawatt-hours of electricity globally in a single day. While details on the calculations behind the stats are a bit hazy, Kakati insists the findings are accurate, as he has woven the research and results into a thesis he is writing. I’ll go ahead and believe this, as it’s not too far fetched in reality. And just in case you missed it, or you feel like wasting even more electricity, Google will still let you enjoy the toy here.
#3 – Al Gore’s House
Despite his well known pro-environmentalist stance, Al Gore‘s house is anything but a pinnacle of conservation. The average monthly electric bill for this Nashville, TN mansion topped out just below the $2,000 mark in 2006. That’s because this gigawatt guzzling gargantuan sapped about 221,000 kwh of electricity off the grid that year…. 20 times more than the average American annual electricity usage.
We can only imagine what level of wastefulness causes such a gross over-consumption of power for a single home. How so much electricity gets wasted by one person is still a mystery to me. Okay, so perhaps it was two people, if you count Larry David’s ex-wife (ba-zing). Seriously though, Al Gore’s house gets the number three spot not because of how much electricity was wasted, but how so much was wasted by one household in a short amount of time. He used almost 23,000 kwh of energy in a single month in 2006 alone. That’s twice as much as a typical home uses in a whole year. How’s that for an inconvenient truth?
#2 – Electronics Displays
What’s the best way to sell the latest, cutting edge high definition LCD and LED TV’s at a department store? Apparently, you just have to put all of them out on the shelves surrounding the entire electronics department, turn them on and leave them on all day (or if you’re wal-mart, leave them on 24/7). They practically sell themselves! Certainly the revenue from selling TV’s this way will offset the absurdly wasteful consumption of all that electricity, or do they even think about it?
Well let’s do the math, shall we? We’ll pick on Wal-Mart specifically for this. The average TV costs about 2.5 cents per hour to operate. Your typical wally world will have anywhere from 60-100 TV’s (or more) on display, flickering fervently for all to see. Let’s assume on average, there are about 75 display TV’s turned on throughout the day. Going by average electricity prices, that equates to about $45 per store, per day in electricity waste.
Doesn’t sound like that much, but let’s go ahead and scale it out for the whole year, multiply by Wal-Mart’s 8,970 stores, and carry the one…. That’s $147,332,250 worth of completely wasted electricity each year – and that’s just one company (although presumably the largest). Best Buy, Sears and the other big guys are just as guilty, albeit to hopefully lesser extents.
And the Number One Biggest Electricity Waster is…….
…Your Toilet
Wait a minute – this article is about wasting electricity, right? Right. Don’t worry, you’re not crazy, and yes we’re talking about electricity waste, not water waste. Still, your commode is an equally guilty culprit in the matter. Why? Because there’s a new way to convert human waste into electricity, and everyone just keeps flushing the potentially power-perpetuating poo right down the toilet! So basically ‘number 2’ takes the number one spot on our list, as pretty much everyone on the entire planet is completely wasting all that electricity on a daily basis.
The new technology, leveraged by some healthy investments from Bill Gates (the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to be exact), works by using microwaves to transform human solid wastes into a gas which can then be piped to a fuel stack for electricity generation. If successful on the large scale, this breakthrough would not only create a viable renewable energy source but also bring desperately-needed sanitation to developing countries where 2.6 million people literally have no place to “go”.