AT&T”s ZERO Charger stops vampire draw
If you leave your phone charger plugged in all of the time it will continue to draw power whether or not your phone is plugged in and charging. This continued sucking of energy is called “vampire draw”. AT&T’s ZERO Charger stops drawing power when your phone is fully charged completely eliminating vampire draw.
The ZERO Charger stops vampire draw (also known as phantom loads) saving consumers money. Most phones have proprietary chargers that will only work with that brand or that phone. The new AT&T charger tries to get around this by having phones connect to the charger with a USB cord which is a problem. Many phones don’t sync with a computer so they don’t have a USB cord. Unless AT&T will include a USB cord with specific phone adaptors, very few people will actually be able to use them.
According to AT&T and the U. S. Department of Energy (DOE):
In the U.S., the total amount of electricity that flows through internal and external power adapters is nearly 470 billion kWh per year or about 12 percent of the nation’s annual electricity consumption. During the process these devices consume about 120 billion kWh per year of electricity and turn it into heat, costing the nation over $12 billion in electric bills.
That’s a lot of energy and money that just flows down the drain when you leave your power adaptors plugged in. Unplugging adaptors when not in use sounds great until you realize all of those adaptors have to go somewhere when not in use. Picking out the right adaptor for your phone, PDA, mp3 player or other small electronic can be a nightmare if you have them all stored in one place. Most adaptors don’t have helpful labels like “Mary’s LG cell phone”, “Dad’s older LG cell phone”, etc.
Plugging the adaptors into power strips that can be turned off when not in use sounds great until you realize that turning off the strip turns off your clock or VCR/DVD player. Not knowing the time or constantly having to reset the time is a pain.
Phones like Apple’s iPhone and RIM’s Blackberry will be easy to use with the ZERO Charger. They both have USB cords to allow you to sync with your computer. In other words, high end phones can use AT&T’s new charger.
The charger isn’t currently available although you can sign up to get information. No price is listed for the charger. It may turn out to be cost prohibitive. After all, most cell phones come with free adaptors.
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