A lot of people unplugged their laptop chargers when not using them. Because they think it will still consume electricity and waste power. But is this true?
Does the laptop charger still use electricity when not in use?
The answer is Yes, It does, The laptop will still consume electricity even when it is not connected to the laptop but the amount of electricity is small to make any difference in your electricity bill.
In this blog post, we will explore how much energy a laptop uses when not connected and should you leave the charger plugged in or not.
How much energy laptop charger consumes when not plugged in?
Laptop chargers or any other devices continue to use a small amount of electricity when they are not plugged into an outlet or a device.
The average amount of energy consumed by the charger when not connected is around 0.3 watts. This experiment was conducted by another big authority website. You can check that out here.
What they did in that experiment is they attached a meter between the charger and electrical outlet.
They wanted to measure the power consumed by the charger when not in use. Even though they knew that the charger will be consuming at least some energy but the meter showed zero.
This means that the power consumed was soo small that it was not even registered. To get at least some reading they decided to use multiple chargers. This did register 0.3 watts of current on the meter.
As you can see that the amount of power consumed by an unconnected charger is too small to matter.
How much will you save if you started unplugging the charger?
Now that we know that the charger does consume some electricity when not in use. The next logical question is how much money will you save by unplugging the charger?
This is the main reason why most people argue that you should unplug the charger. They think that it will save them a lot of money on their electricity bill.
In a study, researchers discovered that the electricity their chargers wasted each year represented just 79 cents. You will save around $0.01 if you started unplugging the charger.
As you can it is not a lot. So even if you always unplug your charger when not using them. It won’t have a significant impact or even a little impact on your electricity bill at the end of the month.
How to check if the charger is consuming energy
There is an easy way to determine this by just holding the charger or touching it and seeing if it is hot. If it is hot this means it is drawing power from the socket or some charger has some kind of indicator light on them.
If the indicator light is on, this means the charger is pulling energy from the socket because the light is also consuming power.
Should you unplug the charger when not in use
Let’s say you are done using your laptop but you forgot to unplug the charger now the charger will continue to draw a very small amount of current from the mains and the regulator will maintain a constant 5 V supply in such circumstances.
Because the charger is not linked to the laptop. it will result in wasted power, but it would be a tiny amount overall.
As you can see that the charger does consume some electricity when not in use. But the amount is so small that it won’t have any impact but should you still unplug the charger?
The answer is you can if you want to but you should do that because
If the charger is left connected to the main power supply and is not linked to any laptop for days the electricity use over weeks and months, and years may be a bit considerable.
However, even though the power consumed is small is still not zero. At the end of the day, any amount of power is wasted – power that you may use to charge your gadgets many times over.
This is also the type of electricity that a large proportion of the world still lacks access to.
In conclusion, once you’ve unplugged your laptop from its charging adapter, turn off the main power source or remove the charger from the wall. It will just take a minute to do so.
Preventions
The easiest way to prevent this energy loss is to unplug the charger when not in use.
Or you can get a smart laptop charger. The thing about them is that they turn off when the laptop is disconnected. They have built-in sensors that detect when the laptop is not connected and will automatically shut off.
This way you don’t have to worry about unplugging the charger every time and you can save a bit of energy. Not a lot but it is still something.
Conclusion
It’s clear that laptop chargers use electricity when not connected but it is very small and you won’t save a lot if you started to unplug them.
Even though you might find it convenient to just leave the charger plugged in the socket so the next time you need to use it, it’s already there.
Still, it’s best to unplug them when not in use to save energy. You can also get a smart charger that will automatically turn off when the laptop is disconnected.