Unplug your cellphone charger - idle power consumption
I worked at Nokia last summer and was quite often reminded to unplug my currently idle cellphone charger. Before the summer, I had no idea how much power an idle charger or adapter actually uses because of the transformer. (No wonder the charger is always warm when I touch it.) Nokia is the first mobile company to implement alerts to remind people to unplug their chargers. In a press release Nokia writes:
Around two-thirds of the energy used by a mobile phone is lost when it is unplugged after charging but the charger itself is left in a live socket. We want to reduce this waste and are working on reducing to an absolute minimum the amount of energy our chargers use. The new alerts also play an important role, encouraging people to help us in this goal by unplugging their chargers.
According to the report enough energy to power 60,000 households per year would be saved if 10% of the world’s cellphone-using population unplugged their phones once they were done charging.
According to U.S. Department of Energy, “nearly 75% of all electricty used to power electronics is consumed by products that are switched off”.
These numbers suggest that we can reduce our overall enery consumption drastically by unplugging home electronics more carefully.
Another solution is to use devices that do not have to be plugged in. Andre Minoli designed a crank-driven cellphone called Motorola PVOT. Apparently, you get one minute of talk time with 25 cranks.
Chul Min Kang and Sung Hun Lim have come up with an ingenious modular power strip called the E-Rope. Among other things, this “twistable” device enables users to shut off the flow of power to any cable simply by twisting the socket section 90 degrees.
