Many mobile phone users simply leave their charging cable in the socket after charging.
What many people don't know is that this also generates costs.
Are you one of those people who charge their smartphone overnight and simply leave the charging cable in the socket during the day?
For many, this is convenient because you don't have to constantly search for the power supply.
But you also have to be careful: Even if no mobile phone is connected at the moment, the charging cable consumes electricity.
So if you want to save electricity costs - especially now that they are going through the roof - you should always unplug it.
Electricity: How much does a charging cable in the socket cost?
An EU regulation stipulates that a power pack with up to 51 watts in standby may only consume a maximum of 0.3 watts.
According to the energy company Vattenfall, leaving the charging cable in the socket for several hours a day without a smartphone consumes around 2.5 kilowatt hours of electricity a year.
Although this only accounts for manageable additional costs of around one euro for the electricity, this can add up if several chargers are connected in the house.
+
The power pack should not be plugged in when not in use.
© Winfried Rothermel/Imago
And especially with regard to the population as a whole, this represents unnecessary power consumption: 83 percent of people over the age of 16 in Germany now use a smartphone, according to a representative survey by the industry association of the German information and telecommunications industry Bitkom.
That corresponds to 57.4 million users.
If each of them left their charging cable plugged in, that would be an additional power consumption of almost 143,000,000 kilowatt hours.
For comparison: According to Verivox, a two-person household in a 60 square meter apartment consumes an average of 2,100 kilowatt hours a year.
Almost everyone disposes of these things incorrectly - are you one of them?
Almost everyone disposes of these things incorrectly - are you one of them?
Is there a risk of fire if the charging cable is idling and plugged into the socket?
According to the
Netzwelt
online portal , it is not a problem with modern chargers if they get stuck.
High-quality devices are built in such a way that they do not overheat when not in use.
The situation is different if it is a cheap no-name product.
Cheap materials are often used here that do not have sufficient fire protection.
In such a case there is a risk of fire.
The same applies to defective devices.
You can recognize them by a permanent overheating or a buzzing when it is in operation, as
Netzwelt
writes.
Such power supplies should be discarded.
List of rubrics: © Winfried Rothermel/Imago