Unplugging
appliances can save you money. 
Does unplugging your devices when they’re not in use really help you save on your electric bill? We’ll find out, in today’s Savings Experiment.
The Savings Experiment, presented by Bank of America, because “Frugal is the new cool.”
It starts off like any other morning: you get up, you pour yourself some coffee, maybe check your email or the weather, and like most people, you turn off the TV, the computer, the lights, and head out the door, leaving your home in a state of quiet solitude. Or so you think…
Little did you know that these seemingly harmless appliances are in fact sinister, money-wasting electricity vampires! Even after you switch them off, they still feed! They are the undead- oh, the humanity!
But wait, how much vampire power is really consumed by these devices when turned off?
All you need is one of these electricity meters to help you tame any energy vampires that may be lurking in your home. It’s called a Kill A Watt. You can buy it online for about $30, and it’s very easy to use.
The device that you
want to measure, you just unplug, and you plug that in, and then you plug the
device into it, and it gives you a reading. It measures volts, amps, watts, and
hertz. The device does measure kilowatt hours, but it takes a really long time
for those to accumulate. So you can calculate how many kilowatt hours each
device uses, simply by doing some math with the watts. 
So leaving my toaster plugged in while I’m not using it costs me $0.09 a month, or $1.08 a year. That may not seem like a lot, but how do the other items stack up?
Each computer registered 3 watts. Using it for 3 hours a day, that means it’s idle for 630 hours a month. That equals $2.76 a year per computer. The TV, if I watch 4 hours a day, comes out to $0.84 a year. The printer came out to $1.08 a year. The coffee maker registered 1 watt. That’s $0.08 a month, or $0.96 a year. A dust buster will cost $2.04 a year, constantly plugged in, while the hair dryer costs $0.96 a year. My lamps barely registered. The cable DVR box took home the prize at 22 watts! Then again, the whole point of a DVR is that it’s running and taping shows when you’re not around. Therefore, you wouldn’t unplug that device.
Keep in mind that the numbers will vary depending on what devices you have, and how much you use, or don’t use, them.
So for everything I tested, that works out to about a $15 a year savings on my electric bill, to plug and unplug things everyday. To me, it’s not worth the effort. But it might be for you. You may have a lot more stuff plugged in than I do, or you may have one item that really draws a lot of electricity. Either way, you may consider getting your own meter, and taming any energy vampires lurking in your home.
