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My $38 'energy saving' power strip actually raised my bill 12 bucks
I plugged my whole entertainment setup into that fancy smart strip in January and the next two bills came in higher than before, so I checked the meter and the thing was drawing power even when everything was off, has anyone else caught a gadget like this doing the opposite of its job?
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brooke711mo agoMost Upvoted
January's a weird month for comparison though, cold snaps make TVs and game consoles work harder than you think, not to mention any space heater you might've had near that same circuit. My smart strip showed a similar "phantom" draw at first, but it turned out the receiver was pulling standby power through the surge protection part, which only matters if you're unplugging everything from the wall entirely. If you really want to test it, kill the strip's master switch for a full week and see if the trend still holds, because two months of winter data is a pretty shaky sample size.
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