2 April 2022 | New Scientist | 31Vampire power
THESE are night-time scenes as
you have never seen them before.
Using long-exposure techniques
and only the illumination from
LEDs on household and office
devices on standby, such as
TVs and computer monitors,
photographer Alessio Perboni,
based in Milan, Italy, casts the
everyday in a new light.
These images are part of
a photo project that is under
development by Perboni called
Stand-by. The Wasted Month,
which will highlight the energetic
cost of keeping devices on standby
instead of switching them
off completely.
There are many estimates
of the amount of energy used
during standby, sometimes
referred to as “vampire power”.
One study of around 1300 homes
in the European Union, for
example, found that standby
energy use amounted to about
7 per cent of a household’s total
energy consumption.
With energy prices on the rise in
many parts of the world, Perboni
says he wanted to highlight the
importance of this “seemingly
invisible and negligible” problem.
In fact, as the name of his project
points out, the standby energy
wasted in a typical home in a
higher-income country in a year
could power that same building
for about a month. ❚
Gege Li
Photographer Alessio Perboni