Today we’re going to talk about a little considered phenomenon that is unnecessarily costing you every month: the phantom load.  We’re also going to talk about what you need to do to get rid of this problem.

When you go to bed tonight, take a look around your house or apartment.  Look for all those little glowing LEDs–your chargers, your electronics in standby mode, all like this.  Everything with a glowing clock–that counts too. Your microwave, everything.  Those are all pulling power, and they’re all contributing to your power bill.  The question is, how many of these can you reasonably shut off?  You may not want to unplug those things with clocks–you’ll have to reset them every time you plug them back in.  Same goes for anything that has a clock but doesn’t display it.  Now, things like battery chargers might be a great place to start–your charger doesn’t need to run any time it’s not actually charging batteries.

If you take a quick look and figure out where your phantom loads are, you might be able to save some money.