Resident Column

Wall Warts – Thieves Within The Night

by Gordon Smith

LW contributor

Ever wonder what those unconnected power adapters sitting in your wall outlet are costing you?

First of all, they are referred to in a derogatory sense as “wallwarts” because they often cover up the adjacent socket and make it unusable. No useful work is being done by them except to heat your house, and their energy would not be dissipated if the wall wart was not plugged in.

The actual quantity is small, amounting to a few cents per week at most. But I have lots of them. That got me to wonder what it costs me to have my TV box and its associated Internet router running 24/7.

Wow! One runs at 36 watts, the other at 30 watts. With SCE charging me 25 cents per kilowatt-hour, that pencils costs me about $11.90 per month. That is not good for my wallet or the environment.

That led me to then figure the cost of the Interact box and the wireless access point that Interact Solutions will install in our buildings to replace all those other units.

I had the opportunity of test driving it last month. It was $3.97 a month! Holy Cow! I’ll save $8 per month on top of getting a bulk TV rate discount and low cost high speed Internet service. Yes, change is hard but the environment, my wallet and my wall sockets are going to be thanking me.