Cell Phone Question.

Ok sorry to get way off the subject but my wife and I are having a talk you what I mean, its about leaving the cord plugged in for charging your cell phone all the time, she claims it is taking electricity I say no way there is nothing to draw the power, ok Help.

Even if it did it would be so small of usage you would never know it.

Just did an energy audit at office/shop where I operate a small business. (power company sent sub-contractor at no cost to me) They said chargers of any type use some power when left plugged in, even when not in use. They said chargers and computers left on consume almost as much power as a TV left on.

It may not be a huge amount, but to this day, I can just see my dad following through the house turning off lights and unplugging anything left on.

Feel the outside of the "wall wart" transformer or the bottom of the charger. If it is warmer than the surroundings, it is consuming electricity when it is idle. Many of those older transformers consume 5 to 10 watts all the time. Some older tv's and stereos still consume 20 watts when they are turned off. Newer electronics with the energy star rating are suppost to be better about not consuming as much electricity when they are idle, generally less than 2 watts at idle.

Something that uses only 5 watts when it's idle for 8000 hours per year = 40 Kw-hr/Yr x $0.10/ Kw-Hr = $4 per year. It starts to add up when you count up how many devices we leave plugged in all the time that always consume a few watts of electricity: chargers, tv's, dvd players, computers, printers, monitors, speakers, modems, routers, etc. It's easy to find over 20 such devices in any home. Power srtips cost $4 to $10.

Eventually all that electricity gets turned into heat that warms up the home. The big question is can you benefit from that extra heat. During the heating season that extra heat benefits you by offseting a little of the load on the heating system. If you are heating with electricity the cost is a wash. If you heat with natural gas it costs you the difference between heating with electricity compared to heating with gas.

During the cooling season is when that extra heat is a disadvantage to you. You have to pay for that extra electricity that just goes into warming your home and then you pay maybe twice that much to have your air conditioner remove that extra heat again.

Technically your wife is right, but the convienience of not haveing to turn all those things on and off when they are not in use may may be worth more to you than the $50/year it could save. If you have to do it, just do it during air conditioning season.