- How much electricity does a cell phone charger use?

A cell phone charger will not consume any electricity by itself; the charger will be using electricity only when a cell phone has been plugged to it.

If you want to know how much electricity it is being used to charge your phone, you need to measure the power consumption by using a plug in power meter.

In any case, the electricity consumption for charging a mobile phone it is very low.

According to our plug in power meter, even when fully charged, our Samsung mobile phone is continuously using 2,8 Watts (W).

That means that the mobile phone is consuming 0,0028 Kilowatts per hour (kWh).

Given that we are paying to our electricity provider 0,217 euro per every Kilowatt hour (kWh) we consume, even while fully charged our Samsung phone consumes 0,0006 euro per hour.

On the other side, if our mobile phone is charging, it continuously uses 11 Watts (W), or 0,011 Kilowatts hour (kWh).

Given that we are paying to our electricity provider 0,217 euro per every Kilowatt hour (kWh) we consume, while charging our Samsung phone consumes 0,002387 euro per hour.

If the mobile phone it is connected, the mobile phone charger does not use any electricity.

If you would like to learn how to measure your mobile phone power consumption, you should have a look to this video where we show how to use a plug in power meter.

Electricity usage and cost calculator

If you know the power consumption of your mobile phone, the calculator below can be used to calculate the power consumption and the electricity cost of a mobile phone over a period of time.

You just need to adjust the values in the PARAMETERS section to your requirements and the calculator will automatically display the RESULTS section.

For example, if your mobile phone battery charger:

Has a power rating of 13 Watts
It needs 6 hours to recharge your phone
You need to recharge your phone 50 times per year
You are paying 0,2 euro (or dollars or pounds) per every kWh you consume

You will be paying 4,68 euro (or dollars, or pounds, or…) per year in electricity costs.

A few other examples from our ‘Electricity usage calculators‘ page that may be of your interest:

Refrigerator

Freezer

Computer monitor

Wi-Fi router

Laptop

Additional information

Not everybody it is familiar with terms like Watts, Kilowatts or Kilowatt hours so if you would learn more about them, have a look to this video that we have prepared for you.

All our videos can be found in YouTube, in both English and Spanish languages.

If you are looking for saving electricity at home, have a look to this video where we provide some useful tips to reduce the electricity consumption and decrease the electricity bill.

Electricity conservation - Save and conserve energy

Energy conservation can be defined as the decision and the act of using less energy

Energy conservation both benefit you and the environment

The act of saving and conserving electricity does benefit you because you will be paying less on your energy bills.

And it also does benefit the environment because conserving electricity prevents any unnecessary waste of natural resources.

Now, at individual level it may not look worth to try to save a few watts here or there.

Still, every little counts and if hundreds or thousands of us do save a little every time, it will make an important contribution towards conserving our natural resources.

For example, if 9000 households would manage to save as little as 10 Watts per hour (0,01 kWh) worth of electricity per day, that would add to 32850 Kilowatt hour (kWh) per year.

That is a considerable amount of electricity, but let’s add additional perspectives for clarity:

Assuming an average cost of 0,18 euro (or dollars, or pounds, or any other currency) we would collectively be saving nearly 6000 euro per year.
To produce 32850 kWh of electricity it is necessary to use around 17 metric tons of coal or 56 barrels of residual fuel oil.

Have a look to this page for more information about the amount of resources needed to produce electricity.

In any case it is clear that small energy savings do really count when looking into the bigger picture.

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