Our library has power check meters (similar to the "Kill-A-Watt" device) available for checkout. I hadn't bothered to try one before, because I'm already going around turning things off all day long, but my husband checked one out and brought it home.
So I was able to determine that our TV setup, which includes an older VCR, is drawing almost 10 W of power, even when everything is Off. It takes electricity for a remote-controlled device to stay awake enough to listen for the remote.
Doing some math, there are approximately 8800 hours in a year, so we are using at least 80 kW-hours of electricity per year for this.
Using 10 cents per kW-hour as our approximate electric rate (with taxes and service fees, it's actually closer to 15 cents per kW-hour), gives a cost of about $8 per year.
That doesn't sound like much, but if it only takes me a few seconds to reach down and hit the off switch on the power strip that these things are plugged into, then my "hourly wage" for doing so will be something like $6/hour--and that's assuming that it only stays off for 8 hours at a time.
So even if I don't get to it every evening, it is worth doing when I can.
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