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Did you know there are vampires in your house? Energy sucking vampires that is, such as your cable box and cell phone chargers. These phantom energy users waste your money and are contributing to the demise of the environment by adding to the energy use and amount of greenhouse gasses that are emitted into the atmosphere. So let’s do something to put a stop those energy sucking vampires. The answer is: energy saving power strips. Read on to find out how these can help you and to find out the best energy saving power strips on the market.

What are Energy Saving Power Strips?

To understand this device let’s
break it into two features it is composed of; Surge Protector and Energy
efficient. A Surge protector uses an advanced power strip which ensures the
safety of your device by absorbing the power spikes generated because of stormy
weather or switching. It actually blocks the current and voltage spikes over a
certain threshold value. Also its energy efficient feature removes the vampire
power, which is the power used by electric equipment during standby mode, thus
saving energy and lowering the electricity bill.

Why do we need Energy Saving Power Strips

Protect from Surges caused by Lightning

The question may arise in your head that how electrical surges are produced? Or reach the electrical devices? Well there are a couple of reasons of their production but the foremost cause is the lightening. That’s why most of equipment is damaged on a stormy night. Lightening is actually nothing but a way for electrically charged atmospheric region to discharge by producing a surge of current. These surges enter inside your home through telephone cables, antenna, and TV cable or even through a tree nearby your home. 

Other Causes of Power Surges

Also the surges are produced because of the frequently switching of the devices comprised of mighty motors such as refrigerators, air conditioners, washing machines etc. Or these surges may be produce because of the static charges present in the environment around and picked up by the wiring, sealing and antennas of your house. No matter the cause, these surges are devastating equally and we all need to protect our electric appliances from getting damaged by these surges.

Protect from Phantom Loads

Aside from protecting from surges, energy saving power strips protct you from phantom loads. Phantom loads cost U.S. consumers more than $10 billion a year and adds up to the output of several power plants. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that households spend $100 per year to power devices while they are switched off.

Devices that Create Phantom Loads

• Stereos
• Blu-Ray & DVD Players
• Window A/C Units
• Appliances with Clocks
• Laptops & Desktop computers
• Printers
• Video Game Consoles
• Modems
• Battery Chargers for cell phones, mp3 players, laptop, power tools and other rechargeable devices.

Advantages of Energy Saving Power Strips

Save the device from getting damaged

Today a relatively greater number
of electric equipment is being damaged because of the surges as compared to the
past. And thanks to the micro-technology the reason lies in their design as
nowadays manufacturer use tiny electrical paths and wires that are not able to
withstand any current/voltage surges. But with these protectors we can easily
make our device secure as they block out all the current and voltage above a
certain threshold value and absorb the spikes themselves.

Saves Energy and Lowers the bill

According to US Department of Energy, 75% of the used electricity
is consumed by the phantom loads. And we all do want to save our money if not
energy. So an energy efficient surge protector gives us multiple outlets to
connect our loads using a single power connection. It is easy to turn off the
load from it than reaching the socket as most of the time it is kept hidden for
maintaining the decor. Also its smart technology automatically turns the
connected device off when it is in standby mode. In actual, it just turns the
appliance off when its power is dropped from a certain limit. But you must
check the power rating of the surge protector before buying as different
devices have varying standby power. Some of them do have an additional feature
of selective outlets; let’s say which turns off the device automatically connected
at outlet 2 but not the outlet 3.

Factors to consider before buying

Before placing your order you
might need to have a look specifically at these factors:

Total No. of Outlets

Although most of the surge
protectors comes with 6 or 8 outlets but it is not mandatory as many of the
advanced surge protectors even have 12 outlets. So you need to select one for
yourself as per your need but it is always better to have an additional 2-3
outlets. One thing you must keep in mind is that all these outlets must be well
spaced so that if all of them are being used they don’t create hindrance for
the adjacent plugs.

Energy saving outlets

Well the energy saving feature
will be said to completely doing justice to its job if it is saving more than
40 US dollars per year. So might check it out before buying and it will be
possible only if a surge protector has more “auto switched” sockets than
“always remain on” ones.

Power cord

You might need to check the
length of the power cord which comes as an accessory along with the product.
The cord should be long enough to reach your socket if placed at your
convenient point.

Suppression Rating

The power surges are often measured
in Joules and normally these devices rating is enough to suppress any power
surges but it is always better to have maximum suppression rating to absorb the
highest power surge or many consecutive small power surges.

Top Five Best Energy Saving Power Strips

Based on their suppression rating, customer rating and ranking we have devised this list for you!