Few weeks ago my friends and I were talking about electricity saving and I mentioned that my ex-flatmate used to leave this TV light on all the time. I mean he would switch off the TV but not completely off from the plug or his mobile charger was always plugged even though the phone wasn’t charging. It kind of bothered me but I ever said anything since I felt it might be privacy intrusion. However, that evening when I was discussing about this with my friends, a guy in the group ( he is studying Mechanical Engineering) spoke how in terms of money it doesn’t cost that much. I agreed with him since he presented his reasons well but it made me more curious about how much electricity we waste or how much in total we actually waste in terms of money.
So after I made few research on internet about it. I came up with this Stanford Magazine article about exactly what I was looking for.
https://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=29053
It’s called vampire energy where because of our small ignorance we waste few bucks. In the paper, you will see that for each appliance left with electricity on, how much energy we will eventually waste.
For example, usually we spend 11 cents per kilowatt an hour ( so technically my friend was indeed right). However, leaving it on stand by mode will eventually cost us a lot.
In the paper you would see an image where you can find more details about various appliances usage while it’s on and while it’s on ‘stand by’ mode.
A fully charged cell phone plugged into the wall is consuming about 2.24 watts, or 60 percent of the power it consumed while charging. Even worse is a charged laptop that’s still plugged in, which consumes 29.48 watts, 66 percent of the 44.28 watts consumed while charging. If you left it plugged in all year, it would consume as much electricity as running your coffeemaker for 12 days straight.
The numbers might seem small but they still matter a lot overall. Why don’t we start from today? Lets switch off completely an appliance when we are not using it. Not only it will be a good news to our financial conditions but we will be happier consciously.
