What was Bush trying to say?

Factual Questions
1

I promise this is not intended as a slam, I’m asking this because this was posted on the Slate.com site, and I really don’t know what he was talking about:

“One of the interesting initiatives we’ve taken in Washington, D.C., is we’ve got these vampire-busting devices. A vampire is a–a cell deal you can plug in the wall to charge your cell phone.”–Denver, Aug. 14, 2001

Can someone translate what he was trying to say?

Thanks much.

2

Took me a few minutes, but I got it. There are devices that continue to draw electricity, even though there is no reason for them to. Amoung these are the cradles for cellphones and palm pilots - they continue to draw current even when the cell phone/palm pilot/whatever isn’t there. This obviously wastes electricity. These are now being refered to as “vampire devices”.

This has become a big deal in the last few days - the WSJ mentioned them, complete with monthly costs, sometime this week. Apparently, there is a new initiative to control these. In the Washington times, Bush claims that eliminating this waste in all “vampire devices” would save 52 billion kilowatt hours a year.

3

Which leads to this wonderful headline: Bush Appoints Energy ‘Vampire Slayer’

4

You have seen tons of those little devices. They are the large black cube plugs. The kind that are used for all sorts of electronic devices. Just take a look at the sort of plug that you Nintendo uses.

5

Those are AC/DC adaptors. I don’t think an AC/DC adaptor itself draws any electricity, given that the female end isn’t plugged into anything. I believe the charging cradles are the culprits.

6

Nope, they don’t even have to have the electronic device plugged into them. Just plug in an adapter and you will feel it get warm after a few hours. The transformer part of those devices is ALWAYS running. If it was not, you would need an on/off switch on the adapter itself, and that would be a major pain.

7

Yes it does draw energy. It does because of the magnetic inductance caused by the frequency of the wall current as it passes through the coils of the transformer. Like posted earlier - feel the heat. That energy has to come from somewhere.

8

OK, so he was trying to make sense. Thanks, everyone for your help.

9

I stand corrected on the matter of AC/DC adapters.

And there goes my latest plan to create energy from nothing. Back to the drawing boards.