Phantom consumption: What it is and how to prevent it from affecting our electricity bill

Are you one of those who leave the mobile connected to the charger the whole time you are at home, even if it is fully charged? It is not going to be that when you go out you have no battery and there is an emergency… Do you leave the mobile charging all night? Do you drop the phone and walk away, leaving the cable connected to the light without a device charging? Well, all these practices can be dangerous for your pocket. Although it may not seem like it, the electricity bill increases slightly every time we do something like this.

Let’s look at the first case. Even when fully charged, a mobile phone battery continues to consume electricity as long as it is connected to the network. Leaving devices plugged in wastes energy, even if it’s a relatively small amount. So at the end of the month, your electricity bill will have unnecessarily increased by a few cents. In addition, it poses a danger to the device itself, because if you leave it for a long time, it can overheat. With newer devices, however, this is not the case. According to a technology expert, they come equipped with an intelligent element that when fully charged stops receiving that energy. However, it does continue to produce electricity. The same happens in the second case, the ideal would be to disconnect the phone, and the charger, once the battery charge reaches 100%

And what happens if you leave the charger plugged into the light without any mobile or device connected? According to INE data, a plugged-in charger (without a mobile connected) spends an average of 0.0002 kilowatt hours (kWh). A minimal expense but if you practice it daily it would mean an increase in the bill at the end of the month.

Thus, both when we leave the phone connected to the charger when charging has finished and when we leave the charger connected to the light, it involves unnecessary energy consumption known as phantom consumption.

This phantom consumption or silent waste is the state in which any appliance is found that, being turned off, remains connected to the electrical network and continues to consume energy, Facua points out. Phantom waste occurs when we keep electrical appliances connected to the electrical network despite not using them, something that can be identified thanks to the red light on some appliances such as the TV. To avoid keeping your electronic equipment in that phantom consumption, which only serves to increase the amount of your electricity bill, they advise using power strips with a switch. Thus, when you turn off the power strip, you will be cutting off the power supply to any electronic device that you keep plugged in.

How much electricity does the mobile consume?

Although each device has different capacities and powers, the average daily cost is about 45Wh, which means a daily cost of 0.045 kWh.

If a price of 0.27606 euros kwh is taken as a reference, in which electricity is situated today, the daily cost of charging the mobile would be 0.012 euros. That is, approximately 1 cent for each load. This means about 37 cents per month, and just over 4 euros per year.