If i leave my charger plugged in and the switch is on without any device charging, does it ‘waste’ electricity? Why/why not?
In: 58
Yes, but the waste is pretty minimal. Chargers need to convert the 120V AC voltage of the wall into a 5V DC power your phone actually uses. This conversion requires transformers which consists of a wire going from the hot prong, wrapping/coiling around a magnetic core, then going back out to the neutral prong. There’s a similar setup on the device side with fewer windings on the same core. I’m going to avoid the technicalities of how a transformer steps down the voltage to keep things simple, but I can go into more detail if people are interested.
Since there’s a complete connection between the hot and neutral prongs, electricity can flow through the device. Now there’s no real resistance with this setup without something plugged in on the other side, so it draws very little power until something is plugged in. We’re talking less than a dollar per year.
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