A few years back, a friend in Southern California went on a money saving kick, and one of things he did was to measure all of the vampire devices in his home. He turned everything “off” and checked the power draw at the meter. I don’t remember the numbers, but it was higher than expected, so he tracked down and eliminated a few surprise vampires until he was satisfied with the baseline.
A year or two later, he repeated the experiment and found that the vampire draw had more than doubled. It took him a day to find the culprit. The power company had (with his permission) installed a radio-controlled cutoff box for the pool pump. The idea was that the power company could remotely cut off the pool pump during periods of high demand. In exchange, they gave him a small discount on his electric bill.
It was difficult to measure the power draw from the power company’s cutoff box because it was hardwired and designed to be tamper resistant. But, by isolating the circuit, he was able to deduce that it was drawing something crazy like 30 or 40 Watts all the time. It cost more to power the box than the discount he received for being part of the program.
When he complained to the power company, they said that program was designed to help manage peak demand, not to save electricity. He quit the program and has since installed solar.
