At three in the morning, nothing in your house is on. The lights are off, the dishwasher finished hours ago, the furnace is between cycles and the fridge compressor is resting. And yet the meter is still turning, because somewhere between 20 and 40 things are quietly drawing power to stay ready: the cable box that needs to wake up instantly, the game console waiting for a download, the printer, the garage door opener listening for the remote, the little black cubes on every charger. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which has studied this longer than anyone, calls it standby power and puts it at 5 to 10 percent of a typical home’s electricity. Everyone else calls it phantom power, or vampire power, after those two-toothed plugs that suck electricity all night.
It is a real cost, and this is a good month to look at it, because electricity rates just hit a record. But a lot of what gets written about phantom power is wrong in both directions: it tells you to unplug your toaster (which draws nothing) while ignoring the three things in the house that actually matter. So we did the math at this year’s prices, found the real culprits, and figured out which hour of effort is worth your time.
The short version
- One watt left on all year now costs $1.60. A hundred watts of background draw is about $160 a year.
- The toaster is innocent. The cable box, the game console in “instant on,” the old stereo and the battery backup under the desk are not.
- Your smart meter at 3 a.m. is a free diagnostic. The reading when nothing is running is your idle load.
- The scientist who runs the national standby program says an hour of unplugging buys about a 20 percent cut. The second fridge in the garage is worth more than all of it.
What a watt costs now
The arithmetic is simple and worth memorizing. A device drawing one watt, all year, uses 8.76 kilowatt-hours. The EIA’s latest figure for the average U.S. residential rate is 18.31 cents per kilowatt-hour as of July 2026, the highest on record, and its forecast for 2027 is higher still. So one watt, all year, is $1.60. Ten watts is $16. A hundred watts is about $160.
The most thorough study of whole-house idle load is still the NRDC’s 2015 analysis of smart-meter data from 70,000 Northern California homes. It found the average house had 164 watts of always-on load, about 23 percent of its total electricity. At 2015 prices that was $165 a year. At today’s national rate, the same 164 watts is about $263. (It is older data from one expensive state, so treat it as an upper bound rather than your number. Your number is in the next section.)
How to find your own idle load in one night
Alan Meier, who runs LBNL’s standby program, has a trick that costs nothing: check your smart meter at 3 a.m. Most utilities now show hourly or 15-minute usage in their app. Find the lowest reading in the middle of the night, when the fridge compressor is off and nobody is up. That is your idle load, give or take. If it is under 50 watts, congratulations, you can stop reading and go enjoy your evening. If it is 150 or more, keep going.
To go device by device, you want a plug-in meter. The classic is the Kill A Watt, about $42 at the moment, and some public libraries lend them out. Plug the meter into the wall, plug the device into the meter, read the watts. Two warnings from LBNL: these meters get fuzzy below about one watt, and they should not be used on anything over roughly 1,300 watts, so leave the space heater out of it.
The usual suspects, measured
LBNL updated its table of measured standby draws in late 2022, and it is the best public dataset we have. Here are the numbers that matter, with the annual cost at today’s rate.
| Device, when “off” or idle | Typical watts | Worst measured | Cost per year, typical |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cable or satellite box | 8 W | 30 W | $13 (up to $48) |
| Battery backup (UPS), nothing attached | 25 W | $40 | |
| Game console, “instant on” mode | 9 to 10 W | 24 W | $15 |
| Game console, energy saving mode | under 1 W | $1 | |
| Old stereo or receiver | 4 W | 27 W | $6 (up to $43) |
| Security camera (each) | 3.5 W | 9 W | $6 |
| Wi-Fi router or modem | 3 to 4 W | 8 W | $6 |
| Smart speaker | 3 W | 7 W | $5 |
| Printer | 2.6 W | 9 W | $4 |
| Desktop PC, sleeping | 2.7 W | 15 W | $4 |
| Garage door opener | 4 to 5 W | 7 W | $7 |
| Microwave (the clock) | 1.5 W | 7 W | $2 |
| Television | 1 W | 24 W | $2 |
| Phone charger, no phone | 0.5 W | 2 W | $1 |
| Smart plug (the plug itself) | 0.2 W | $0.30 | |
| Toaster, kettle, clockless microwave | 0 W | $0 |
Two things jump out. First, the devices got better. LBNL notes that twenty years ago a typical gadget drew 1 to 3 watts in standby and now it is nearer 0.5. The trouble is that the number of gadgets grew faster, so the house total stayed roughly the same, just spread thinner. Second, the spread between typical and worst-case is huge. A median TV costs you $2 a year. The worst one in the table costs $38. That is why measuring beats guessing.
The one setting worth changing tonight. If there is an Xbox in the house, go to Settings, General, Power options and switch “Instant On” to “Energy Saving.” NRDC measured it at 9 to 10 watts in Instant On versus under 1 watt in Energy Saving. It boots a few seconds slower and saves about $14 a year. A PlayStation 5 in rest mode already drops to about a watt once it finishes charging the controllers, so it is fine as is.
What is actually worth unplugging
LBNL keeps a page titled, usefully, “What Can I Unplug Now?” Its priority list is not the one in most articles. The best targets are old things you rarely use and seasonal things sitting idle for months:
- The guest room setup: a TV, a cable box and a soundbar that nobody has touched since July.
- Old stereo gear, VCRs, DVD players, and a stack of receivers from three home theater generations ago.
- A battery backup with nothing plugged into it, or a UPS protecting a computer you replaced with a laptop.
- Seasonal chargers: the leaf blower, the e-bike, the drill, the cordless mower. Their chargers draw something even with no battery on them.
- The window AC, dehumidifier and box fan that are plugged in and off until June.
- A printer you use twice a month. Put it on a switched strip.
And the things not to bother with, or not to touch at all: the refrigerator, anything with a clock you actually use, the router (it is the house’s nervous system now), security systems, medical devices, and your phone charger, which draws half a watt and is not worth the daily wrestling. The Department of Energy’s own standby tips are three lines long: use a switched power strip, unplug what you do not need, and buy ENERGY STAR when you replace things. That is still the whole list.
The honest part: it is not the biggest lever
Here is a line from LBNL’s own FAQ that you will not see quoted in most phantom power articles: an informed and aggressive approach can cut standby use by about 20 percent, and “there are more productive ways to save energy with an investment of an hour.” We agree, so here is where that hour goes instead, using the EIA’s 2020 household survey of what the average home uses per year:
- Water heating: about 2,700 kWh a year. Turning the tank down to 120°F, which we walked through in our under-$100 heating bill guide, is a two-minute job.
- The second refrigerator: about 500 kWh a year on average, and up to 1,200 kWh for an old one sweating in a hot garage. Roughly a third of American homes have one. If yours holds twelve cans of seltzer, that is a $90-a-year seltzer fridge.
- The dryer: about 680 kWh. A drying rack for half the loads is free.
- Computer sleep settings: DOE calls sleep mode the single most effective energy saver on a computer, and screen savers do not count.
So do the phantom power pass once, properly, and then stop thinking about it. It is a one-time $40 to $150 a year, which is nice. The water heater and the garage fridge are where the real money hides.
While we are on winter nights
These are not phantom loads, they are things people run overnight without doing the math. An electric blanket draws about 100 watts: eight hours is about 15 cents a night. A 1,500-watt space heater running the same eight hours is about $2.20 a night, fifteen times the blanket, and about $66 a month. If the space heater is standing in for a cold bedroom, the blanket plus a sealed window and door is the better answer by a wide margin. And when the holiday lights go up next month: a string of 25 incandescent C7 bulbs draws about 150 watts, the LED version about 2. Over a month of five-hour evenings, that is roughly $4 versus a nickel per string, using Cornell Cooperative Extension’s figures.
The gear we would buy
- P3 Kill A Watt P4400: about $42, no app, no account, lasts forever. Check your library first.
- Kasa EP25 smart plugs, 4-pack: about $42 for four. Each one measures what is plugged into it and can be scheduled off overnight. The plug itself draws a fifth of a watt.
- TrickleStar advanced power strip: about $30 (many utilities rebate it to $15). Plug the TV into the control outlet; when the TV goes off, the soundbar, console and streaming box go off with it. Two always-on outlets keep the router alive.
- Emporia Vue 3: $100 to $200 depending on sensors, installed in the breaker panel, for the person who wants to see every circuit. Overkill for most houses, perfect for a few. It pairs well with the whole-house thinking in our portable power station guide, where knowing your real loads decides how big a battery you need.
If you only do three things
- Read your meter at 3 a.m. (in the app, not in your slippers). Know your number.
- Put the entertainment center on one switched strip, and switch the console to energy saving mode.
- Unplug the old and the seasonal: the guest room TV, the dead-weight UPS, the leaf blower charger.
Then go turn the water heater down and have a hard conversation about the seltzer fridge. That is where the money is!
Phantom power FAQ
How much does phantom power cost per year?
Somewhere between about $40 and $260 for a typical house at 2026 rates, depending mostly on how many set-top boxes, consoles, old audio components and battery backups you own. LBNL’s 5 to 10 percent of household electricity works out to roughly $100 to $200 for an average home.
Does unplugging a phone charger save money?
About a dollar a year. The LBNL median for a charger with nothing attached is half a watt. Unplug it if the cord is frayed, which is a safety issue; otherwise leave it.
Do smart plugs use electricity themselves?
Yes, but very little: about 0.2 watts, or 30 cents a year. They pay for themselves on anything drawing more than about 3 watts in standby.
More ways to lower what your home costs to run: Energy & Bills · How to cut your heating bill for under $100 · Calm tech, explained · The sustainable home upgrades most people overlook
Whole Earth Home is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. Links in the gear list are affiliate links, and we may earn a small commission on qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you. Electricity prices are from the EIA’s September 2026 Electric Power Monthly; device prices were checked October 14, 2026.