Phantom Power usage?

If you’ve been reading my blog, you know I’ve been watching this “green” thing for a while now.   I made strides in my life to make a difference in my power bill.   As much as I’m sure others would like for this to be about the environment, for me, it’s about the power bill FIRST then the environment somewhere down the list.

I have seen several commercials and articles that suggest your Cell Phone chargers are actually wasting power and should be unplugged during the day when they are not in use.   So I wanted to test this theory.

I took my Kill-a-watt and put it to good use.

Terri has a Pantech Cell phone that she charges at night.  So, I took it, plugged it into the Kill-a-watt and I was shocked.  It read a whopping ZERO Watts.  It read ZERO amps.  It appeared that it was consuming ZERO power when it’s not plugged in to the phone.   Am I missing something?

So, I took my iPhone charger and did the same test.  It’s using ZERO watts.  It was using 0.01 VA (see the definition).    So, again, am I missing something?

I did however, check my Electric rechargable shaver and since the battery won’t recharge anymore, it IS consuming 6 watts of continuous power.  If I’ve done my math right at $0.13 per KWH hour, this would cost me 56 Cents to leave it plugged in for the entire month (not counting the times I use it).   For the record, it only uses 3 watts when it’s running so it’s clear that it uses more power when it’s not in use (trying to charge the battery) than when it is in use).

So… Once again I conclude that the majority of the power bill at my house is Air Conditioning, Clothes Drying, Water Pumps, and heating Water.