Best Tips to Save Money, Electricity

Every citizen needs to save money and electricity; therefore, you must follow these tips and start unplugging your appliances.

Studies affirm that when you turn off your appliances, they might run certain functions in the background when plugged in. Hence, unplugging them would stop energy from silently draining out and increasing your bills, saving you both electricity and money.

Your appliances actually still use energy even when they are turned off but still plugged in, according to Energy.gov.

Whether the device is switched off or in standby mode, some of the worst offenders is one of the following:

• A device that may still use energy in the form of permanently on lights or other displays showing the device is off
• Computers that were simply put into sleep mode
• Chargers that still draw power even if the device is not connected
• Media players that continually draw power, especially ones that still might scan for updates in the background
• Phones with displays that show when not in active use, like cordless phones
• New smart home appliances like refrigerators, washers and dryers that have always-on displays, internet connectivity and electronic controls

The energy that gets used from these devices while not in active use is often called standby power, but it has other names like phantom load, shadow loads, idle current, or vampire power.

A study from "The Natural Resources Defense Council" indicated that reducing the load from always-on devices would save consumers a total of $8 billion annually and avoid using 64 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity per year. Moreover, it helps in creating a greener environment as it prevents 44 million metric tons of carbon dioxide pollution.