Subscriber The Distant Librarian forwarded this post on a way to fight those phantom devices referenced last week in Living Green in 2008.Long story short: We had some new carpet put in our rec-room/TV-room downstairs. When I put the room back together, I took the opportunity to upgrade the powerstrip that my "home theater" is plugged into to an Energy Saving Smart Strip.
No, I'm decidedly not a Captain Insaneo Audio/Videophile (I have enough friends that meet that description when wanting a raucous home theater experience), so the Smart Strip meets my relatively basic needs.
I plugged the TV power cord into the blue, or "control" outlet, and plugged the cable box into one of the "always on" outlets (I don't want the box to reboot every time I want to watch the TV).
The rest of the components and gaming devices I plugged into the "auto-switching" outlets so they are fully off (no standby mode!) when the TV is off and they switch to standby mode on when I switch the TV on.
I haven't yet plugged a Kill-a-Watt into my components and TV to determine how much power I'm saving by not having them in standby all the time, but I suspect I'll recoup my roughly $40 investment within a year.
Check out all the Smart Strips on Amazon.com if you're interested.
~AmazonGreen Scene
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