Several of the competing designs at today’s Greener Gadgets conference in New York save energy by cutting the standby or vampire power used by many electronics when the devices are turned “off.”

Here are five noteworthy designs in the competition:

Bug Plug: A motion sensor for surge and power strips that shut off devices when it detects no motion in the room after a set period of time. The sensors look like bug antennae.

eMetric: A network of surge suppressors that each shuts off power to devices to eliminate vampire power. They communicate in an office to share usage data and shut-off protocols. The ideas is that you and your office mates will go greener through peer pressure.

PPP: Power “pets” plug-in modules that can cut power to devices remotely.

Vampire Plug: Cuts power to your charging device after a set period of time, reducing vampire power draws. This would benefit those of us who leave their cell phones or Blackberries charging all night, though just a couple of hours would do.

Watt Blocks: A standby power killer using plug-in modules and one master switch you step on to kill power to all your vampires. The signal is sent over the home’s powerline.

Let’s hope some of these make it to production. I especially like the Watt Blocks, which would be great to shut off hard-to-reach surge suppressors.

Click here to view my favorite products from the Greener Gadgets Conference.

Steven Castle - Contributing Writer

Steven Castle is Electronic House's managing editor. he has been writing about consumer electronics, homes and energy efficiency topics for two decades. He is also the co-founder of GreenTech Advocates.