Your house is full of vampires. They never sleep, they never stop drinking, and you’re paying for every drop.
I’m talking about the gadgets that keep pulling electricity when you think they’re off.
When the Natural Resources Defense Council measured more than 70,000 Northern California homes, it found that always-on and idle devices ate nearly 23% of household electricity. That worked out to about $165 per household a year, according to its study.
The Department of Energy uses a more conservative 5% to 10% of home energy use and puts the cost at $100 to $200 a year, according to Columbia University’s Climate School.
And every watt costs more than it used to. The average U.S. residential electricity price hit 18.31 cents per kilowatt-hour in July, up 4.9% from a year earlier, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Here’s a handy rule of thumb: Every watt a device pulls around the clock costs you about $1.60 a year at today’s prices. That sounds like nothing until you count what’s plugged in. The NRDC found the average home had about 43 devices drawing power while idle.
The good news is that killing most of these vampires takes a few minutes and costs nothing. Here are seven to stake tonight.
1. Your smart TV’s ‘quick start’ setting
Many smart TVs ship with a feature that lets them turn on instantly. To pull that off, they never really go to sleep.
When the NRDC tested popular models, it found these wake features added 5 to 20 watts of standby power on most of them and could raise a TV’s yearly electricity use by as much as 75%, according to its report. That’s about $75 per TV over a typical seven-year life.
The fix: Dig into your TV’s settings and turn off anything called quick start, instant on or fast boot. You’ll wait a few extra seconds for the picture. Your wallet won’t mind.
2. The game console that’s never really off
Video game consoles are some of the worst offenders, because their instant-on modes keep them half-awake so they can download updates and boot fast.
The NRDC found the Xbox Series S drew 9 to 10 watts in Instant On mode, versus less than 1 watt in the energy-saving mode, according to its testing. Run my rule of thumb, and 10 watts around the clock is about $16 a year for one box.
The fix: Switch the console’s power setting to energy saver or shutdown mode. On a PlayStation 5, rest mode drew 1 watt or less in the same testing, so that one’s less of a worry.
3. The cable box sitting under your TV
Cable and satellite boxes — especially ones with a DVR — are notorious energy hogs.
Back in 2011, the NRDC estimated these boxes cost Americans about $3 billion a year to run, and roughly $2 billion of that went to power used while nobody was watching or recording, according to its analysis.
The fix: Return any extra boxes you aren’t using — you’re likely paying a rental fee on them anyway. Check whether your box has a low-power or sleep setting. And if you’ve mostly switched to streaming, ask yourself why you still have the box at all.
4. The smart speaker that wakes your TV
A smart speaker on its own isn’t much of a vampire. The NRDC measured models like the Amazon Echo and Google Home at roughly 1.4 to 1.9 watts on standby, or about $1.50 to $4 a year each, according to its testing.
The trouble starts when you hook it to your TV. The same testing found that letting a speaker turn on the TV by voice could push the TV’s standby power from under 1 watt to about 20 watts, around the clock.
That’s roughly $30 a year to save yourself from picking up a remote.
The fix: Turn off voice control of the TV, or at least check whether it’s forcing your set to stay half-awake.
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5. The computer that never sleeps
In the NRDC’s home study, an idle desktop computer drew about 9.5 watts on average, and that’s before you count the monitor, printer and speakers plugged in next to it.
The fix: Set your computer to sleep after 15 or 20 minutes of inactivity, and plug the whole desk setup into one power strip you can switch off at night.
The Energy Department says an advanced power strip, which shuts off accessories automatically when the main device goes idle, can save you up to $100 a year.
6. Chargers, clocks and glowing lights
Here’s where I’ll save you some effort. A phone charger plugged into the wall with nothing attached draws about a quarter of a watt, based on data from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory reported by Stanford magazine. That’s pennies a year. Don’t lose sleep over it.
Laptop chargers are a different story. Left plugged in with nothing attached, a laptop brick drew about 4.4 watts in the same data.
The fix: Unplug laptop chargers and anything you rarely use.
The lab’s guidance is simple: If something has a remote or a glowing display and you don’t use it much — the TV in the guest room, the coffee maker you rarely use — unplug it or put it on a switchable strip.
7. The old fridge in the garage
This is the big one, and it’s the one people are most attached to.
An old second refrigerator in the garage or basement can cost about $80 a year to run, according to Energy Star. An old fridge uses about 35% more energy than a new Energy Star model.
The fix: Ask yourself what’s really in there. If it’s a case of soda and some freezer-burned hamburger patties, empty it and unplug it.
Before you haul it off, call your utility and ask whether it offers free pickup or a rebate for recycling an old fridge. For more, see “6 Fridge Fixes That Cut Your Power Bill and Add Years to Your Refrigerator.”
The bottom line
No single vampire is going to drain you dry. A charger here and a speaker there are pocket change.
But a smart TV, a game console, a cable box and a garage fridge add up, and every one of them is costing you money for the privilege of saving a few seconds you’ll never miss.
Spend 20 minutes this weekend walking through the house after dark, looking for little glowing lights. Then turn off the instant-on settings, unplug what you don’t use and put the rest on a power strip.
For more ways to cut your bill, see “8 Ways to Lower Your Electric Bill That Actually Work” and our rundown of the common appliances that run up your power bill.
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