Remote Ready Electricity Leaking Appliances
In order to receive a remote control signal, appliances need to use electricity to be “on alert”. I’ll list the wattage used while ‘turned off’, if applicable, based on research done by the Lawrence Berkely National Laboratory on Standby Power.
In many cases, disturbingly, the amount of energy used when ‘off’ is close to the amount of energy used when ‘on’. For some context, the average LCD computer monitor uses 55W when turned on, a notebook computer uses 73W, and a CFL light bulb uses 18W.
The most common standby electrical vampire culprits that most of us would guess are:
- TVs: 48.5 W
- Stereos: 5.44 W
- DVD or Blu-Ray players 10.58 W
- DVR with cable: 43.61 W
- Satellite TV box: 33.05 W
- Cable box: 30.6 W
- Video game console: 63.74 W (off, but ready)
- Garage door opener (didn’t think of this one at first!): 7.3 W
Obvious Non-Remote Phantom Load Electrical Appliances
This next category of electrical leaches are the ones that are not controlled by a remote, yet still, rather obviously, waste electricity:, but there isn’t much you can do about reducing that
- Cable modem: 8.62 W
- Wireless phone: 4.89 W
- Answering machine: 7.4 W
- Clock: 3.61 W
- Microwave (w/clock): 4.9 W
Not So Obvious Phantom Load Menaces
And last, but not least (in electrical waste), are the appliances that you wouldn’t really expect to be using electricity while turned off and not even charging:
- Cell phone charger: 1 W
- Computer LCD monitor: 3.5 W
- Desktop computer (off): 9.21 W
- Desktop computer (sleeping): 83.3 W
- Computer stereo speakers: 5.6 W
- Plugged in laptop (not charging): 50 W
- Fax machine: 8.72 W
- Furnace: 9.8 W
- Air Conditioner: 1 W
- Ink jet printer: 4 W
- Coffee maker: 2.7 W
- Musical instruments: 4.2 W
- Gas range: 1.7 W
- Night light (off): 0.34 W
- Surge protector: 6.3 W
- Electrical toothbrush: N/A
- Shaver: N/A