Electro-luminescent or green wires

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As responsible citizens of Earth, wouldn't it be nice to reduce the "leaking electicity" or "vampire energy" (which is essentially the energy used by appliances that are in standby mode). The National Energy center focused on Standby Power waste, estimates that in most of the developed countries 5 - 10% of the energy is wasted as a result of appliances being plugged in, even when not in use.  That is essentially 5 - 10% of the carbon emissions (from coal fired power plants) added to the atmosphere annually.

Now, we've had electricity around for a little over century, and it is becoming ubiquitous in our daily life and at the same time totally invisible. At least water leakage, we can hear the taps drip or the droplets fall on the floor, but with energy, we have no clue. Right at this moment, every household probably has at least 10 batteries draining power silently and 4 appliances leaking power, without the thought crossing anybody's radar in the house.

Imagine, electricity suddenly became like water, where we can actually see its flow and the droplets that fall on the floor, when there is a leak. Of course we are not there at, but what we do have are really cool "green wires" or "electro-luminescent wires" that can visually broadcast to the consumers when electricity is flowing through them. Suddenly, we enter a household of the future, where no electricity leak is going to go unnoticed.

Green wires or electro-luminescent wires work on a couple of concepts - the concept of a capacitor bring run on AC electricity that makes it charge and discharge in rapid succession, and exposing those discharges through a light emitting dielectric such as Phosphor. The combination of these two concepts, lead to a wire that emits light in a continuous unbroken stream and 360 degrees around the wire, when electricity is passing through it. Also the intensity of the emitted light goes down as the power consumed by the appliance goes down, very much like turning down the valve of the faucet, reduces the visible water flow

If you are dying to get your hands on green wire or electro-luminescent wire invention and start saving on standby power or vampire energy, then you don't need to wait any longer. Dexim recently announced a smart phone charger for iPhones, that has these green wires that emit a blue light when the iPhone is charging, and the intensity of the light starts dropping as the charging nears completion.

Even though the use of green wires or electo-luminescent wires starts out as a novelty, it could very well be the source of significant reduction in carbon emission in the very near future. More power to these innovations and manufacturers for making it a greener future!!