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Who wants to pay more on their electric bill if they don’t have to?
Here’s how to identify and measure phantom loads to save money.
What Is a Phantom Load?
How much money will you save?
But don’t worry; we won’t leave you hanging with a vague estimate.
Here are some basic questions you could ask about a given unit.
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If the answer to any question is yes, the gear has a phantom power load.
To find out how much, you need a measuring gadget.
The Kill a Watt is accurate to within 0.2% wattage and can measure down to 0.1W.
If you’re at all curious about the power usage of devices around your home, you need this device.
For our purposes, however, the Kill a Watt is useful and a great value.
Just plug it in and read the output on the display.
You might be shocked at the results, by the way.
But what if you’re curious about the overall phantom load of your home?
That’s kind of a novel thing to be curious about.
Here’s how you might get a rough idea of how much energy your home consumes in different states.
You’ll also need a stopwatch and a calculator.
First, let’s establish a baseline to have a reference point and a basis for judging any changes.
Don’t change anything in your home, like unplugging devices.
Go outside to the meter and measure the energy usage with the technique outlined in the article above.
Efficient or not, those things need to stay on for your safety and well-being.
If you’re even more curious, it’s possible for you to go back and unplug more things.
Unplug the TV in the guest room.
Unplug your old game console you hardly ever play.
Do a final reading of the power meter.
Let’s say the reading is now 600W.
The difference between the idle-but-plugged-in reading, 900W, and the idle-but-unplugged reading, 600W, is 300W.
