Even when you're not charging your cell phone or laptop, the power cord sips a bit of energy from the wall if you leave it plugged into the outlet. In the U.S., all those tiny sips add up to wasting around $3 billion per year in energy costs.
There are all manner of fancy gadgets out there to help folks reduce their vampire power consumption, but the simplest solution for plug-in chargers is to just unplug them from the wall. Of course, that's easier said than done. We're busy people! Sometimes, we need to grab that cell phone and run, or we just get distracted and forget it's plugged in all together.
Enter the Outlet Regulator. Conor Klein, a student at Rhode Island School of Design, modeled and named his device after those blood-sucking creatures. After a leech in nature drinks its fill, it drops off of its host. Klein's energy-saving device works the very same way:
this product mimics the leeches inelegant yet efficient solution for over-consumption. it is hard to tell when electronics are or are not taking energy and many never stop taking energy if they are plugged in (e.g. cellphone chargers). this product solves that problem by using a timer circuit and electromechanics to eject its plug which disconnects your device from the wall outlet. once the plug falls out, all energy consumption stops and only resumes once the plug is inserted again.
It's such a simple solution, and the potential energy savings are huge! Check out the Outlet Regulator in action:
The Outlet Regulator isn't available for purchase, but we'll keep our eyes peeled!
This device doesn't address vampire power that electronics use in standby mode: TVs, gaming systems, printers, and so on. For that problem, you'd want to look into using smart power strips to help get a handle on what devices you're allowing to suck electricity from the wall.
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Interesting concept but not entirely viable… Sorry but that’s more of a gimmick to sell a new “look how cool I am while saving the earth” product ;P
For starter the impact of producing this anti-leech device has its own environmental impact and it has to be proven to me that mass production of the device will actually be worth the energy savings preventing leeching. These are the kind of misleading info that would need to create less buzz and be more investigated before being posted anywhere and proposed as “green”. I am not trying to bash the initiative and kudos to Conor Klein for the inventiveness in trying to come up with a device thought with a noble purpose.
The outcome may not be exactly eco-friendly or may even increase the overall consumption of energy, resources use and actually cause a higher impact in the end rather than minimize it. Unfortunately, having the best intentions will not necessarily mean always achieving the best outcome.
There are several other issues involved here:
1)The “anti-leech” is not really viable because devices such as those needing to be recharged, need also to “trickle-charge” when the battery goes below a certain level. That, will prevent the battery to go eventually die, since even while on stand-by, cellphones and similar devices are still drawing battery power unless completely turned off.
2) There is a better alternative that carries no need to produce additional devices for which more energy and plastic materials would be needed. Government agencies that have the power to legislate an regulate the sector of devices using electric power, could outlaw building devices that leech power when not needed.
For instance while cellphones need continuous supply of power to operate as intended (stand-by, call, send and receive data, etc.) and most of that power comes from its charged battery, there are plenty other appliances that could be completely turned off or could just use a rechargeable and replaceable internal battery to provide enough power for stand-by operations. TVs, entertainment centers, computers, cable/tuner boxes, intercoms, radios and alarm clocks, and basically any device with a wall-wart or transformer.
3) End the nonsense of 1 device + 1 extra wall-wart! Enough transformers and plastic being used for an endless amount of devices that do the same thing!
Power supplies, transformers, power conditioners, wall-warts and the likes, should be standardized once and for all. As much as everything in US works on 115~120v AC, why shouldn’t the majority of all electronic device have a standardized connector with standardized polarity, pin-out and operating voltages? If that was the case, all houses and offices could be equipped with a low voltage, low power DC-line to be used for all those devices that run on DC. From cellphones to mp3 players, radios, network devices, you name it. After all that’s what we already do when we need to charge those devices and we plug them into our computers’ USB port. The downside is that a computer will consume lots of power and it is definitely not efficient to keep your PC turned on, to just make it charge your cellphone.
A DC line instead, would be far more efficient because power would be drawn only as-needed and will leech way less power than current “always-on” wall-warts”. For systems that need continuous power to work as intended, charged devices will stop leeching DC power and will enter trickle-charge afterward just to keep battery at its highest capacity. This would apply to a limited amount of devices like cellphones for instance, while those devices that do not need to be always-on in order to function as intended, should be able to enter stand-by and run on minimal battery power if not used for a short amount of time, after which, if they are still not in use, they would go from stand-by to completely off mode where no power at all would be drawn.
The same changes should apply to all appliances so there will never be the need to “spit” power plug with a fancy device because the energy saving features would be already built-in into any device running on electrical power.
In conclusion… where there’s a will there’s a way. Kudos to Conor for the potential of his idea in need of further refinement, and shame on the Gov. agencies for not doing more to fight the curbing the current energy waste (you know who you are, do something already!)