In the last few years I have purchased a pressure cooker and an air fryer. They both waste electricity by having an off light. Furthermore they act like red nightlights and my kitchen has an eerie red glow at night. What is the actual purpose for off lights besides to waste electricity?
Still seems useless. I never turn my appliances on just to see if they work. I just…use it. If it doesn’t do anything, then I know it’s broken.
It’s also not just a single LED. In your house, yes, but multiply that by however many appliances in the wild have that same “feature” and the power wastage is much more real. It’s the same reason it’s recommended to unplug phone chargers and such when they’re not being used.
Vampire power, I believe, is the term. It’s when millions of tiny power loads add up to a significant overall draw while performing no useful work.
Vampire power is a thing, but not really that huge since regulations have launched the 1W initiative. The vampire power consumed by the average house in the US is less than a thousandth of the entire energy consumption. Less than a dollar per year. Of course, over a couple million homes we are talking about a few million dollars, that’s not nothing. But also, it’s less than a 0.001% of the entire grid residential electrical consumption. To cut power emissions and usage, that’s almost a non-issue at best, a distraction at worse.