Electricity is an integral part of a home, could you imagine a life without using household appliances or any other electronic devices? Every day you use it for several hours and on many different occasions, starting from shampooing your hair to the refrigerator that has to be continuously plugged in. All the consumption is then turned into the bill at the end of the month, which is often quite steep. How, then, to avoid excessive costs?
Well, you can start with some small steps by avoiding bad habits such as phantom charging. Let’s see together what it is!
What is phantom charging?
Phantom charging occurs when there are current chargers without a device plugged in, or when an appliance is not running but still remains plugged in. Think, for example, of microwaves, oven, washing machine, and so on that are not constantly running, yet they still consume power, why? Simple, because household appliances need to maintain a kind of “memory” within their programs, just think of such a factor as the time of day. It goes that they still need the same amount of energy and therefore waste it unnecessarily, because in fact at those precise times the appliance is not needed. Same thing happens with chargers for PCs, tablets, phones and so on.
When to unplug devices
Once we’ve clarified the extent of the phantom charge, let’s find out when it’s good to unplug devices. Well, if you know that a microwave oven, a stove, the blender, and anything else in the house won’t be needed for quite a few hours or days at a time, unplug it. Ideally, you should do this all the time; however, it becomes a bit cumbersome to have to constantly plug and unplug. In this regard, a smart solution might be to put all plugs connected to a bootie and turn the button off overnight or during hours of uselessness. With the slipper solution you can also easily unplug only part of the appliances. Another trick you can do is to unplug appliances that you know you will not need for a long time, an example being the printer.
Additional expedients with appliances
Then there are additional expedients with electronic devices that you can do on a daily basis. Unfortunately, many bad habits are prevalent that go to the detriment of not only your utility bill, but also the very health of the device itself, which can go into general failure. Here are the things to watch out for:
- Unplug chargers when charges are finished;
- Try to charge devices, especially the phone, without continuously disconnecting it from the power. Take it off only when it is fully charged;
- PCs and tablets are among the most bill-consuming items because they require a lot of energy to complete charging. So, take advantage of charging at night times because the costs are lower.
