This is how much electricity a mobile phone charger consumes if you leave it plugged in.. It might surprise you

This is how much electricity a mobile phone charger consumes if you leave it plugged in.. It might surprise you

Sometimes we have some doubts about the charging of our Android smartphone: if it charges better with airplane mode, if the order in which we connect the cables matters, if fast charging is harmful to the battery... and the consumption is unknown from a charger that has not been used.

We won't save much money on our electricity bill by unplugging the charger when it's fully charged, although it doesn't hurt to do so. What (although negligible) savings are we talking about? That's what we investigated, and we'll tell you our findings.

- Almost imperceptible "phantom" consumption

The moment our cell phone battery reaches 100%, the energy flow stops. Nothing should happen even if we leave the smartphone permanently connected to the electrical outlet, it will not catch fire or explode. Obviously, if we want to use it, the best solution is to disconnect it from the charger.

The charger generates some consumption when left plugged in: the flow of electrons within the charger's internal components means small consumption.  

Another bad practice you might be doing is leaving your phone charger plugged in all day, even if you’re not charging your phone. Whether it’s laziness or forgetfulness, this is a bad practice because it also, to a lesser extent, increases your electricity bill throughout the year.

If we consider that the charger connected to electricity without being connected to any mobile phone, consumes an average of 0.00002 kilowatt hours. Since it spends an average of 24 hours connected, we will spend an average of about $ 0.12 per year.

It is true that it does not represent a large cost and everyone can afford this extra amount of leaving the charger connected to electricity, but you should know that this also affects the productive life of the charger.

As we have seen, even with a charger with a high virtual consumption, the increase in the price of the electricity bill will not be noticeable monthly. In short, we will not ruin ourselves by forgetting the charger connected, and we will not get anything positive from doing so other than affecting the life of the charger: it is advisable to remove the charger when you have finished recharging the smartphone battery.