Charging cable: This is the typical power consumption

by Johannes

A charging cable also consumes electricity, even when it is plugged into the socket and you are not charging a mobile phone or other device with it. If you have several chargers, this adds up to several kilowatt hours a year in unnecessary consumption.

This is the power consumption for one charging cable

The charging cable or a plug for the charging cable has a constant power consumption, even if you do not connect a mobile phone or other device to the cable. Many people are not aware of or do not care about this fact because the consumption of a device is also manageable. But even so, it is easy to reduce household electricity costs with chargers.

  • In Germany, electricity costs about 30 cents per kilowatt hour.
  • A charging cable sometimes has more and sometimes less power, depending on the device being charged. However, the power consumption in standby mode of the plug is about 20 cents per year. You can also notice this by the fact that LEDs light up or the device is still warm, even if no consumer is connected to it.
  • That’s not much for a single plug, but often you not only have your mobile phone at home, but also a tablet, a notebook and various other devices that you don’t need at all for long stretches of the day, or even for much longer.
  • It is safe to assume that there are more than 60 million smartphones in Germany alone, all of which cost 20 cents per year in idle time.
  • With this number, that means 12 million euros a year in electricity costs or several million kilowatt hours of electricity that could supply hundreds of households in Germany with electricity for other devices.
  • When the unused power consumption of charging cables for laptops, tablets and other devices is added to this, the figure rises significantly once again. Not to mention that all that electricity has to be produced somewhere too, and not every household has its own mini photovoltaic system.
  • In view of these figures, it is advisable to save electricity for chargers. When not in use, unplug charger cables from the socket or get a power strip with power interruption.

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