Take a look at what you have plugged in. Does it have a little light on it? That little light sucks electricity. Can it be turned on by a remote? That capacity to be always ready for a remote control to turn it on sucks electricity. Do you leave your computer on all day? Not only does that suck electricity, but the computer brains can't reboot and can muck up the computer's workings (I have had a computer guy tell me that sometimes when he is called to fix a computer all it needed was to be turned off and turned on again.)
So. Take a look at what you can unplug. Like my battery charger, it only needs to be plugged in when I am recharging batteries, but I have often left it in to sap money. If you have an entertainment center, consider putting it all into a surge protector strip (good to possibly save you from power surges too) and turn the surge protector off every night.
My microwave has a clock that I never set, leaving that plugged in costs me money; that's next on my list, to get it set up where I turn its electricity sapping quality off instead of draining pennies from me.
I asked the computer guy about surge protectors when I had to have my modem replaced when it was hit by lightning (plugged into my surge protector which was on). He said the surge protector only gives you a bit more chance not to get fried machines from power surges from the company. He says turning it off doesn't kill the protection because now it doesn't need protection because it isn't drawing power. As to them being able to save you from lightning, they really can't do that well, he actually suggested if you want to be as safe as possible to unplug the surge protector during a storm although that isn't 100% effective either because he said he once had to replace a modem that he could see the burn mark left from the jump from the outlet to the modem nearby.
2 comments:
Great info!! Thank you so much for sharing.
Who is the computer guy you're referring to? Trying to find one in town...
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