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
- 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.
