Columbus: A force as insidious as Bram Stoker's leading man is quietly sucking a nickel of every dollar's worth of the electricity that seeps from home outlets.

Insert the little fangs of a cell phone charger in the outlet and leave it there, phone attached: That's vampire electronics. Allow a computer to hide in the cloak of darkness known as "standby mode" rather than shutting it off:

That's vampire electronics. The latest estimates show five percent of electricity used in the United States goes to standby power, a phenomenon energy efficiency experts find all the more terrifying as energy prices rise and the planet warms.

That amounts to about $4 billion (euro 2.78 billion) a year. The percentage could rise to 20 percent by 2010, according to the US Department of Energy.

In California, lawmakers passed a proposal last year, dubbed the Vampire Slayers Act, to add vampire electronics labels to consumer product, detailing how much energy a charger, computer DVD player, Play Station, microwave or coffee maker uses when on, off or in standby mode.

"It's something people don't know about," said Dave Walton, home ideas director for Direct Energy, a utility and energy services company that has one of its four main offices in Dublin, Ohio.

The issue is particularly pressing in Ohio, the No. 1 emitter of toxic air emissions in the US, mostly from electricity production at the state's coal-fired power plants.

Source : PTI