Week 3 (& 1/2) - Unplugging

Planet saver:

Money saver:

Time saver:

Three weeks in and I'm already behind. I'm still working on my public transportation project, but in the meantime, let's talk about outlets.

I've heard over and over that unplugging your electronics when they're not in use will save something like 10% of your electricity bill. I even remember a while back seeing a TV campaign to convince you to unplug your cell phone charger when not in use. So how much does this "standby power" really cost?

Cost and energy savings

According to the Berkeley National Lab, if I leave the following running after I go to bed tonight:

• 2 cell phone chargers plugged in but not in use (.5 watts)
• 1 desktop computer and one monitor in sleep mode (21.1+1.4 watts)
• computer speakers left on (4.1 watts)
• 1 printer on (4.9 watts)
• 1 wireless router turned on (5.4 watts)
• 1 TV plugged in (3.1 watts)
• 1 DVD player plugged in (1.6 watts)
• 1 microwave plugged in (3.1 watts)
• 1 clock radio (not needed since I'm using my cell phone for an alarm clock) (2 watts)
• 2 phones (3.2 watts)
• 1 answering machine (2.3 watts)

I will be using a total of (wait for it . . .) 52.7 watts per hour, or about .42 kilowatt hours from 10 pm to 6 am. In the month of July, that would save me .42 kwH*$.105*31 days=$1.37. Not too impressive. That's $13 bucks or 230 pounds of CO2 a year (the same as I produce in my little Honda Civic in a 350-mile trip), for a year's worth of reprogramming the answering machine and punching the time back into the microwave.

Findings

If anything, it does seem worth powering down the computer completely, like with a power strip. That's where the lion's share of the electricity is going, and it takes hardly any time. If I forget to turn off one 60-watt light one night, that's burning more energy than all my electronics put together. If the computer doesn't go into sleep mode, though, that will cost something like 74 watts/hour. Oh yeah, and uplugging the cell phone chargers doesn't seem like a campaign worth fighting.