Last Updated on 2020-12-14 , 4:28 pm
Unless you’ve been living under a rock and won’t need electricity, you’d have known that prices of electricity in Singapore has been exactly been like my boss’s salary.
It’s increasing every three months, and we, the workers—consumers, I mean—suffer.
Still don’t feel like saving electricity?
Well, with global warming on the rise, all of us are more or less aware of the importance of conserving energy and picking environmentally-friendly electrical appliances.
Moving on: how can we save electricity?
I mean, other than not switching on the air-con at night, of course.
Some of the common things we do is to switch off the appliances that we are not using, such as turning off the TV or lights when we go to another room. However, if you are merely pressing the power button on the appliances, you might be in for an unpleasant revelation.
Because when your appliances are on standby, it is still drawing electricity.
Known as standby power, or a more apt (and real) name, vampire power, electronics and electrical appliances still draw power even when it’s turned off, as they would be on “standby” mode. This would allow them to be switched on faster when you need it.
For example, if you leave your phone charger plugged in, it is actually drawing about 0.26 watt of energy. That’s if no phone is connected at the other end, so the current is effectively just running through the charger itself.
If you like to leave your phone charging overnight and think that the electrical current will just stop flowing and thus avoid using any electricity, think again. A fully-charged phone uses 2.24 watts while being connected.
At this moment, developed countries usually restrict the vampire power to about 0.5 watt.
Obviously, those numbers are very tiny in comparison to your total energy consumption. However, if you think about it, how many appliances do you leave plugged in even when not using? Your TV, your air-conditioner, your desktop computer and more.
The good news is that it’s now better compared to what it used to be twenty years ago: in the past, standby power draws much more electricity (up to 22% of the total electricity bill).
A survey of households have showed that all these phantom energy accounts for 10% of your household electricity bill (although that can be argued to 3%), but still, the dollars do add up after years.
And the main culprit? Your computer.
It’s simply a hassle to completely unplug everything or even go around switching off all the wall sockets switches. But a trick to this is to use a power strip to connect to the wall socket, and just turn off clusters of devices at a go.
This way, you will save most of the energy that would otherwise be wasted!
Either that, or just have the habit of using less eletiricial appliances. Your life isn’t just about the Internet, the TV or the washing machine (???), you know.
Featured Image: Lolostock / Shutterstock.com
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