Buzz
Usually, we have the habit of keeping the charger plugged into the socket continuously, either when the battery is low or when we need to charge it. While this saves some time, it leads to some other negative consequences. In this article, I'll point out those issues.
To conduct this experiment, a journalist used a Kill A Watt voltage meter to measure the electricity consumption of commonly used chargers. First, we plug the voltage meter into the power outlet, then plug the chargers into this voltage meter. The voltage meter accurately calculates the energy consumption that the chargers are causing.
After testing numerous chargers for , , , Android phones, and laptops... not drawing power into the devices, it's evident that the chargers for these devices do not consume electricity. In simpler terms, when not drawing power into the devices, these chargers give a reading of 0.0 watt on the Kill A Watt voltage meter.
However, in practical theory, each device charger does consume a small amount of voltage, although it's too small to display on the screen. To address this issue, the journalist decided to plug in a power strip with multiple outlets, then plug the chargers into each outlet until voltage appears.
As expected, the initial chargers didn't show any voltage until the sixth charger was plugged in. At this point, the voltage meter displayed 0.3 watts. These six chargers include those for 12 Promax (20W), M1 (20W), M1 (30W), Note 20 Huawei iPhone XS So the question arises: over a year of continuous charging like this, how much electricity will we consume? Hypothetically, if we continuously plug in these 6 chargers (without powering any devices) for a year straight (8760 hours) with the current state's electricity price of 2,461 dong/kWh.
This figure equates to an electricity consumption over the year of 2.628 kWh, costing us 6,467 dong/year. This is a very small amount that we usually wouldn't pay much attention to.
However, this is a simple experiment yielding the most accurate results possible. Older chargers would consume much more electricity. Nevertheless, based on this information, we can easily explain to parents about the electricity consumption from leaving chargers plugged in without charging devices. This can help avoid confrontations from parents due to phone usage and charging habits throughout the day.
While not consuming too much electricity, we should still be more cautious about continuously plugging chargers into sockets like this. This could pose greater dangers in our daily lives, especially regarding the high risk of electrical leaks. For families with young children, we should be extra careful with electrical matters, especially covering up sockets and keeping electronic products, and wires out of reach of children. Additionally, after using chargers, we should unplug them to help extend their lifespan and durability.
Overall, this simple experiment helps us see that continuously plugging chargers into sockets doesn't greatly affect the economy as parents often say. However, from my personal standpoint, this is still not a good or safe practice in households. We should still disconnect chargers after fully charging devices.
- Explore more articles in the Discovery section
