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Here’s how much it costs to charge a smartphone for a year

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I’m on a mission, and that mission is to save on my power bill. I’ve already done the obvious stuff, like replace lightbulbs — especially the 500W halogens floodlights I have outdoors — with low-power LEDs, and I’m being more careful as to how I use heating and cooling. But along with making big changes, I’ve also been looking at just how much power all the random stuff I have plugged in uses.

Power consumption was measured using a WattsUp? PRO power meter.

My test subject was the iPhone 6 Plus, which had the biggest battery that Apple offered at the time of my test. I’m also a pretty heavy user, and this meant that going all day was sometimes tricky (the things I do for you). This means that my results are going to be at the high-end, and that more restrained smartphone users are going to have a smaller power bill.

So here’s what I found.

During an overnight charge, the iPhone consumed an average of 19.2 Wh.

According to figures published by the US Energy Information Administration for July 2018 (the latest figures currently avaialble), the average cost per kWh in the US was $0.13.

Remember that 1 kWh equals 1,000 Wh.

So, take our average of 19.2 Wh per day, multiplying that by 365 days, we get 7 kWh, which works out at $0.91 a year.

So if you guess under a dollar, well done.

See also:

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