Cell Phone Chargers and Power Savings

“Duh!” [smack]

That was the sound of me smacking myself in the forehead for something that is, in hindsight, blatantly obvious.

Save energy by unplugging your various AC/DC converters. All of those little black boxes plugged into your walls, plus your computer, Tivo, TV, VCR, stereo, printer, etc. etc., draw little trickles of power while you’re not using them. The linked website recommends unplugging them, I say keep all that stuff plugged into power strips which you physically turn off. That saves time as well as energy.

Here’s a nice gadget that will tell you just how much juice these things are drawing.

Will this all add up to something significant? Something that will effect an affect affect an effect to your monthly electrical bill? Perhaps not, but every little bit helps.

Comments

6 responses to “Cell Phone Chargers and Power Savings”

  1. Jeff Avatar
    Jeff

    I’d like to see new houses require cards like a lot of the hotel rooms. There would be plugs with full time power and ones that would turn off if the card is removed. I’ve been trying to think of a good way to retrofit this capability.

  2. Bill Avatar

    @Jeff: I’ve never heard of those. What are they?

  3. Chris Avatar

    Hotels in Europe especially have a slot by the door. You open the door with the room key (card) then stick the card in the slot. Many outlets and most lights are switched on when only when the card is in place. The idea is that there’s no reason to power the stuff in your room when you aren’t there.

    When I was in Aussy two years back I noticed that most outlets had small horizontal toggle switches so it was easy to turn off transformers and such that were plugged in.

    @Jeff: Try a home automation system and tie it into ‘non-critical’ circuits right at the breaker box.

  4. Annie Avatar
    Annie

    Something that will effect an affect to your monthly electrical bill?

    pssst… did you mean affect an effect? or is this just a really garbled sentence?

    affect = verb (or noun when referring to emotion/mood)
    effect = noun

    not really in grammarsnark mode, just my under-caffeinated brain exploded while trying to parse that sentence. My first run through had me wondering: why would I want to put an emotion on my electric bill? (yeah, in my field, I get a lot of affect as noun usage.)

  5. Annie Avatar
    Annie

    Now, my topic related comment:

    I heard recently, that it’s cheaper to recharge a cell phone/iPod etc. in the car (while driving) than off the wall socket (now, this is probably pennies savings). The reason is that the energy drawn off the car is already being generated at no additional cost to you (other than the cost of driving, which you were going to do anyway). And, if you listened to this week’s Car Talk, the drain on the car does not significantly decrease any gas mileage.

  6. Bill Avatar

    @Annie: Ah yes, quite right. Perfectly backwards. Corrected now.

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