Quantifying kitchen appliances’ phantom loads using a shifted gamma distribution model

Global energy consumption has gone up and will continue to increase into the future as the population increases and more energy is required to provide resources for the growing population. One way to reduce electric power consumption is to reduce phantom loads, which occur when electronic devices draw energy, even when not in use. This seemingly innocuous source of energy consumption has gained attention for its impact on residential bills and the environment. We hypothesize that kitchen appliances' phantom loads, based on online statistics, account for more than 10% of their total electric power consumption. To test this hypothesis, we propose a shifted gamma distribution model to estimate the phantom loads and apply the model to a public dataset of household electric power consumption. Our results showed 10.9% phantom loads for kitchen appliances supporting our hypothesis. Our findings suggest that implementing strategies to mitigate phantom loads becomes imperative to reduce electricity bills and save energy.