Turning down the house

How lazy people can conserve energy 4

small-house-off-switch 250I love this idea: a single off-switch for your whole house, to power down all of those nonessential appliances that suck electricity while you're at work or out on the town.

OK, so it's just a concept at this point. But it's a good one.

I'm sure my family could make use of something like this. Oh sure, we try to be pretty careful about turning off lights, but every so often we leave a light burning for days in the basement. And of course, there's always a handful of appliances -- a stereo, a modem -- that suck a bit of power whenever they're plugged in, even when they're off. (For most models, for example, the clock on the microwave uses more power than the oven itself.) But plugging and unplugging all these appliances from the wall is a royal pain, especially since we have kid-safe protectors on all of the outlets. A universal power-off switch might save us five bucks or so a month on our power bills.

Unfortunately, retrofitting my entire house to take advantage of this sort of switch would probably cost more than the energy I'd save. But at a minimum, the idea of a whole-house off-switch is a good reminder that there's plenty of waste left in the energy system -- meaning that, in theory at least, we hyperconsumptive Americans could cut way back on our power consumption without affecting our lifestyles one whit.

Clark Williams-Derry is research director for the Seattle-based Sightline Institute, a nonprofit sustainability think tank working to promote smart solutions for the Pacific Northwest. He was formerly the webmaster for Grist.

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  1. Andrew Dessler Posted 7:34 am
    15 Aug 2007

    If you really want to do this ...I'm pretty sure that most houses have a main circuit breaker that does exactly what you described above --- one switch that shuts off all power to your house.  

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  2. sunflower's avatar

    sunflower Posted 8:57 am
    15 Aug 2007

    I have oneActually two for both lines, shuts down all 110 V outlets except for dedicated lines to security systems.

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  3. trock Posted 9:28 am
    15 Aug 2007

    a main switchSure, every house has a main switch, but I don't think people would use it if they had to walk out of the basement with all the lights off to use it.  The switch would have to be when people walk out of the main walkout door.
    I'm just going thru what I'd have to do to get it all wired up for it.  Probably not worth it.  I'd need another electical box or some switch in there I'm not familiar with.  
    I think they should have an Energy Gold Star program to go along with the Energy Star program.   It would be those electrical products that go that extra step to get rid of phantom loads.   That would be real off switches on everything.   No clock on the microwave.   lowest draw on the answering machine.   It shouldn't be to hard to have a real on/off switch on the TV that is used once to turn it on.

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  4. Michelle Parker Posted 11:15 am
    15 Aug 2007

    circuit breakerIf you used the circuit breaker, you'd definitely want to keep the fridge running, though. Plus, you'd need to make sure that your other major appliances were already turned off so that you wouldn't have a power surge when the circuit was switched back on.
    It would be good to know if the "universal power-off switch," that Clark's talking about, avoids surges like that.

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