What’s Making My Electric Bill So High? Four MORE Surprising Energy Vampires
Photo from Wikipedia, Public Domain in the U.S.
Almost a year ago, we shared a blog post about five surprising energy suckers quietly blowing up your energy bill. Because using less energy isn’t just healthy for your wallet but for the planet as a whole, we thought we’d update you some more energy consumption criminals that may be lurking in your home.
“Energy vampires” are a major problem in our country, where nearly one-fourth of a home’s power usage is made up of devices on “standby” or “sleep” mode. You heard right: As much as 25 percent of your energy bill goes to keeping devices on when you’re not using them.
As you can see, it pays—literally—to know which devices use the most energy when they’re not actually in use.
Without further ado, we give you four more surprising energy suckers:
1. Your Gaming Consoles
We’re talking to you, Xbox! Microsoft’s popular gaming console known for depicting medieval battle scenes in spectacular resolution is also known for drawing more than twice the power of the PlayStation 4 while in standby mode. This is because your prized entertainment system is slowly downloading system and app updates when you’re not playing, so that when you pick up the controllers everything is ready to go.
Overall, the Xbox One consumes 233 KWH/y on average, roughly 30 percent higher than the PS4, which itself slurps up a hefty energy load.
Board game night, anyone?
2. Your Microwave’s Digital Clock
Did you know your microwave actually consumes more electricity powering its digital clock than it does heating food? While defrosting your frozen vegetables requires about 100 times more energy than powering the clock, the clock is on 24/7, and this takes an energy toll that turns out to be larger overall.
Solution? Keep your microwave plugged into a power strip that you can turn on and off. And wear a watch.
3. Your Fully Charged Cell Phone and Laptop
If you charge your cell phone and laptop overnight, leaving them plugged in long after they’re fully charged, you may want to reconsider. A fully charged cell phone still plugged into the wall is consuming about 2.24 watts, or 60 percent of the power it was drinking in while charging. A laptop, meanwhile, consumes 29.48 watts, or 66 percent of the 44.28 watts it consumes while charging. (For the record, if you leave your laptop plugged in all year, it would eat up about the same amount of energy sitting there doing nothing as if you operated your coffeemaker for 12 straight days.)
4. Your DVD Player
When your kids finish watching Frozen for the 500th time, you may want to unplug the DVD player, or at the very least ensure that the DVD player is turned off. A DVD player that’s turned on but not playing anything is still consuming about 13.51 watts, while one that’s in standby mode is using 5.04 watts. Over a year’s time, you’d be surprised how this can add up.
Be sure to check out our other blog posts about saving energy, and after that you might as well see what we’re all about.
Thanks for checking out the latest update from the electricians Bucks County and Montgomery County count on!