Why does leaving electronics plugged in still consume electricity?

611 views

Let’s say I have a computer plugged in, or a microwave, or phone charger plugged in. Isn’t the point of a device being off is that it’s not supposed to be using electricity? How much watts of power am I looking at that’s being consumed per hour?

Where does this apply and where does it not? Shouldn’t I try to unplug everything as much as possible to save money?

In: 101

14 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

There’s two issues:

1. Even when a lot of appliances are “off” they actually still have part of the system running to detect when you call for them to start back up.

2. Most electronics run on low voltage DC so they have a power supply with a transformer. There are losses in the transformer even when there’s no load on it.

You are viewing 1 out of 14 answers, click here to view all answers.