我应该拔掉电器的插头吗?如果是这样，我可以节省电费吗?

我应该拔掉电器的插头吗?如果是这样，我可以节省电费吗?

All things plugged in will bleed some energy. Called "standby" electricity loss because it's so often associated with electronics in standby or idle mode, it's also known as "phantom" or "vampire" electricity (for obvious reasons). Even turned off, many appliances keep drawing power. Same goes for all those chargers — whether or not a device is charging! That means the charger continues to use power even if your cell phone/portable vacuum/toothbrush/wireless drill isn't attached, let alone charging. Power supplies don't just convert energy; they consume it. Anything with a transformer — those black boxes on power cords — draws power as long as it's plugged in. And because of poor design, these boxes waste up to three-fourths of the electricity that passes through them.

所有充电的东西都会消耗一些能量。它被称为“待机”电损耗，因为它经常与处于待机或空闲模式的电子设备有关，它也被称为“幽灵”或“吸血鬼”电(原因很明显)。即使关掉电源，许多电器仍在吸电。同样的道理也适用于所有的充电器——不管设备是否在充电!这意味着即使你的手机/便携式吸尘器/牙刷/无线电钻没有连接，充电器也会继续使用电力，更不用说充电了。电力供应不只是转换能源;他们使用它。任何有变压器的东西——电源线上的那些黑盒——只要插上电源就能吸电。由于设计不佳，这些盒子浪费了高达四分之三的电力。

If it's plugged in, it's using energy. (Photo: Dream2551/Shutterstock)

The Natural Resources Defense Council says the cost of plugged-in but not used devices is about $165 per household, or $19 billion across the U.S. That amounts to about 44 million tons of carbon dioxide, or 4.6% of the country’s total residential electricity generation, points out The New York Times.

据《纽约时报》报道，美国自然资源保护委员会表示，未使用的嵌入式设备的成本约为每户165美元，相当于全美190亿美元，相当于4400万吨二氧化碳的排放，占美国住宅总发电量的4.6%。

Unplug 10 of those black box transformers and you save, depending on how much you pay for electricity, $20 a year. But add up the energy used when we are not using our TVs, stereos, cable boxes (all turned "off" but really in standby mode), computers, modems, routers, printers (these networks tend to be left on all the time), rechargeable devices (cellphones, computers, MP3s, cameras, wireless tools and vacuums, toys, cordless phones) and their transformers, and you get the equivalent of a year's output of 17 power plants. The oft-cited research by Alan Meier of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory finds that vampire energy accounts for about 5% of all residential electricity use.

拔掉10个这样的黑盒子变压器，你就可以省下每年20美元的电费。但是当我们不使用电视、音响、有线电视盒(都“关闭”但实际上在待机模式),计算机、调制解调器、路由器、打印机(这些网络倾向于留在所有的时间),充电设备(手机、电脑、mp3、摄像头、无线工具和真空吸尘器,玩具、无绳电话)时消耗的能量,相当于17个发电厂一年的输出。劳伦斯伯克利国家实验室的艾伦·迈耶经常被引用的一项研究发现，吸血能源约占所有住宅用电的5%。

The Department of Energy sets the loss at 5% to 8% of a single family home's annual usage, which is an entire month's energy bill. That's a national average; take a walk through your home and count the number of devices you have plugged in (don't forget the washing machine) and you may find that you're spending 25% of your energy bill to feed vampires.

美国能源部设定的损失为单户家庭年用电量的5%至8%，相当于一个月的能源账单。这是全国平均水平;在家里走一走，数一数你插上电源的设备(别忘了还有洗衣机)，你会发现你要花25%的能源账单来养活吸血鬼。

Good to know:

很高兴知道:

If you're not using your computer, unplug it or at least turn off the monitor. And plug your phone into a power strip. (Photo: David M G/Shutterstock)

Use power strips: Instead of unplugging things one at a time, make the job easier with power strips. You can then switch off or unplug the strip to turn all the devices off at once — really, truly, actually off. There are all kinds of "smart" power strips on the market that make the task ever easier: strips with motion sensors (leave the house/office and it'll shut off all devices automatically); strips that have a few "always on" sockets, with the rest turned off as you please; and power strips that allow a master device to control the power use of its paraphernalia (turn on/off your computer or TV or stereo, and the peripherals are turned on/off too). In the meantime, I'm going to put my surge protectors on timers because, well, I don’t always remember to switch them off. OK, that's almost never remember, and at least this way they'll be off when I'm most likely to be sleeping.

使用电源线:不要一次拔一个插头，使用电源线可以使工作更简单。你可以马上关掉或拔掉所有的设备——真的,市场上有各种各样的“智能”电源板,使任务更容易:运动传感器(离开家/办公室,它会自动关闭所有设备);有几个“一直开着”插座的接线板，其余的可以随意关掉;和允许主设备控制其设备的电源使用的电源条(打开/关闭您的计算机或电视或立体声，和外设也打开/关闭)。与此同时，我要把我的电源保护器设成定时器，因为，嗯，我并不总是记得把它们关掉。好吧，这几乎是从来没有记住，至少这样它们会在我最有可能睡觉的时候被关掉。

Your screen will be fine; save energy instead: Screen savers don't save energy. If you won't be using your computer and don't want to shut it down (but why?), turn off your monitor. I've read that we spend as much as $100 a year running screen savers. Along the same lines, you can reduce the energy consumption of your TVs and computers by dimming the screen: Reduce the brightness by half, and you can cut energy use by 30%.

你的屏幕效果会很好;而且节省能源:屏幕保护程序不节省能源。如果你不想用电脑，也不想关机(为什么?)，那就关掉显示器吧。我听说我们每年花费100美元来运行屏幕保护程序。同样，你可以通过调暗屏幕来降低电视和电脑的能耗:将亮度降低一半，就可以减少30%的能耗。

Check yourself: Measure the electricity usage of all your appliances — on or off — and see for yourself which ones are the big suckers. A popular power monitors is Kill A Watt.

检查你自己:测量你所有电器的用电量——开着或关着——自己看看哪些是最耗电的。一种流行的电源显示器会消耗一瓦。

Standby is better than on: Whether you consider vampires a threat or not, it's when things are turned on that they're consuming the most power, so turn them off even if you don't unplug!

待机状态比开机状态好:不管你是否认为吸血电是一种威胁，当你开机的时候，他们消耗的能量最多，所以即使你不拔电源也要把他们关掉!