🔌What does standby power cost a year?

✓ Tested & verified Updated: Aug 8, 2026 How we calculate this

Standby power cost

Power it draws (watts)

Hours a day

Days a week

Country

Your price per kWh

$5.59 a month ≈ $67.01 a year

That is 1.08 kWh a day · $0.18 a day · $0.0077 an hour while it runs

Electricity used a year: 394 kWh
Cost a week: $1.29
Cost a year: $67.01

Add up the household: a set-top box 15–30 W, a console in rest mode 10–15, a soundbar 3–5, an old AV receiver 10–20, each modern TV under 1. Most homes land between 30 and 60 W.

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How much does standby power cost?

A household with 45 W of standby load spends about $67 a year at $0.17 per kWh — £99 at £0.25, €138 at €0.35. That is 394 kWh, more than a modern fridge uses, for devices doing nothing.

The reason a trivial wattage becomes real money is hours: standby runs 8,760 hours a year. One watt left on permanently is 8.8 kWh a year, so every watt you find is worth about $1.50 in the US and €3 in Germany, annually, forever.

The offenders are not evenly distributed. Set-top boxes and DVRs are the worst at 15–30 W, because they stay awake to record and update. Games consoles in rest mode are 10–15 W. Old AV receivers, powered speakers and anything with a mains transformer follow. Phone chargers are not on the list any more — a modern charger with nothing plugged in draws well under a watt, which is pennies a year, and the advice to unplug them is a leftover from leakier hardware.

One watt left on permanently is 8.76 kWh a year. Here is what that means device by device.

Device on standby	Draw	kWh a year	At $0.17	At £0.25	At €0.35
Modern TV, true standby	0.5 W	4	$0.75	£1.10	€1.53
Phone charger, nothing attached	0.3 W	3	$0.45	£0.66	€0.92
Soundbar	4 W	35	$6	£9	€12
Console in rest mode	12 W	105	$18	£26	€37
Set-top box or DVR	20 W	175	$30	£44	€61
Old AV receiver	15 W	131	$22	£33	€46
A typical household total	45 W	394	$67	£99	€138

Two rows at the top, five at the bottom. That is the entire practical lesson: ignore the chargers, deal with the boxes.

Frequently asked questions

Is it actually worth unplugging things?

It is worth unplugging three or four things and ignoring the rest. Find the set-top box, the console, the old receiver and the second television, and either switch them off at the wall or use their proper low-power modes. Chasing every charger and clock costs more inconvenience than it returns.

How do I find out what a device uses on standby?

A plug-in energy monitor, which costs less than a month of the problem. Many will not register loads under about 3 W accurately, which is fine — anything they cannot see is not worth chasing. For a whole-house figure, read the meter late at night with everything obviously off.

Do phone chargers waste electricity when left plugged in?

Barely. A modern USB charger with nothing attached draws well under a watt — a few cents a year. The advice comes from an era of unregulated transformers that ran warm. Leave them; go and look at the box under the television instead.

What is a games console's rest mode costing me?

Typically 10 to 15 W to stay ready for downloads and remote wake, which is 88 to 131 kWh a year — $15 to $22, £22 to £33, or €31 to €46. Switching to full power-off, or turning off the download-while-resting option, removes most of it.

Does a smart plug or extension lead use anything itself?

A smart plug draws about half a watt to a watt to keep its radio alive, so a strip of them can quietly reintroduce part of what you are trying to remove. A plain switched extension lead uses nothing and does the same job for the devices you can reach.

Is standby regulated?

Yes, and it is why the problem has shrunk. EU rules cap most standby modes at 0.5 W and networked standby at a few watts, and similar limits apply elsewhere. What remains high is equipment that is not technically in standby — a DVR recording, a router, a console downloading.

How we calculate this

Standby cost is watts × 24 hours × 365 × your price per kWh — the same arithmetic as any other appliance, with the hours set to permanent. One watt of continuous load is 8.76 kWh a year, which is the figure worth remembering. The default of 45 W is a mid-range whole-household estimate for a home with a set-top box, a console, an entertainment system and assorted small electronics; a plug-in monitor or a late-night meter reading is the accurate answer for a specific home. Devices that are performing work — a router routing, a DVR recording — are not standby loads even though they are never switched off, and belong in their own calculation.

Worked example

With Power it draws (watts) 45, Hours a day 24, Days a week 7, Country United States (USD), Your price per kWh 0.17, this page works out $5.59 a month ≈ $67.01 a year. That is 1.08 kWh a day · $0.18 a day · $0.0077 an hour while it runs

Electricity used a year394 kWh
Cost a week$1.29
Cost a year$67.01

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