Right now, while you’re reading this, a handful of devices in your house are drawing power without doing anything useful. The cable box on standby. The printer that hasn’t printed since spring. The coffee maker’s glowing clock. The phone charger with nothing plugged into it. Individually they’re trivial. Together they’re one of the few line items on your electricity bill you can cut this weekend for less than the cost of a takeout dinner.
This is the phantom load, also called standby power or vampire draw. Fixing it doesn’t require a contractor, a permit, or a rebate application. But most people buy the wrong device for the wrong outlet and end up saving almost nothing. Here’s how to do it in the order that actually works.
What Counts as a Phantom Load
A phantom load is electricity a device draws while it is switched off or sitting idle. Some of that draw is buying you something: a smart TV listening for a wake word, a DVR recording overnight, a router keeping the house online. Some of it buys you nothing at all — a wall wart converting AC to DC for a laptop that isn’t attached to it.
The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that standby power accounts for roughly 5 to 10 percent of a typical home’s electricity use, which works out to somewhere in the range of $100 to $200 a year for an average household. A larger field study by the Natural Resources Defense Council and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which measured "always-on" load across about 70,000 Northern California homes, found an average continuous draw of 164 watts — well over 1,000 kilowatt-hours a year, and close to a quarter of those homes’ total electricity consumption.
Those two figures measure slightly different things. The DOE number is about device standby. The NRDC number is broader "idle load" that also sweeps in furnace controls, well pumps, aquariums and outdoor equipment. Read together they say the same practical thing: the always-on share of your bill is real, and it’s bigger than most people guess.
Doing the Math on Your Own Devices
The arithmetic is simple enough to do in your head. A device pulling a constant 10 watts uses about 88 kilowatt-hours over a year (10 watts × 8,760 hours ÷ 1,000). At the U.S. average residential rate — around 18 cents per kWh in 2026, though it runs under 12 cents in some states and over 30 cents in others — that’s roughly $16 a year for one device doing nothing.
Now count how many of those you have. The usual suspects:
- Cable and satellite boxes, especially DVR models that stay near full power around the clock
- Game consoles left in instant-on or rest mode
- Soundbars, AV receivers and older desktop PCs
- Printers, which wake periodically to run their own maintenance cycles
- Coffee makers, microwaves and range hoods with lit displays
- Chargers and power bricks left plugged in with nothing attached
- A second refrigerator or chest freezer in the garage that’s half empty
DOE singles out game consoles as one of the worst offenders, noting that avoiding console standby draw alone can save as much as $100 a year in a household where they’re routinely left in rest mode.
Measure First, Buy Second
Before you spend anything on smart plugs, spend $15 to $25 on a plug-in energy monitor. You plug it into the wall, plug the suspect device into it, and leave it there for 24 hours. It reports actual watts and cumulative kWh, which turns guesswork into a list ranked by cost.
This step matters because intuition is usually wrong. Modern LED TVs often sip well under a watt on standby, while an eight-year-old AV receiver or a garage freezer can quietly outspend everything else in the room. If you want to sweep the whole house rather than one outlet at a time, our DIY home energy audit walkthrough covers the wider hunt for wasted energy, from air leaks to appliance draw.
Smart Plugs: Best for Single, Predictable Devices
A smart plug sits between the outlet and one device and lets you kill power on a schedule, from an app, or by voice. Basic models run about $10 to $15 each; versions with built-in energy monitoring cost a few dollars more and are worth it because they show you whether the plug is earning its keep.
The important caveat: the smart plug itself draws power to stay on Wi-Fi, typically around a watt. If you use one to control a device that only draws half a watt on standby, you’ve made things worse. Smart plugs pay off when the load is meaningful and the off-window is predictable:
- A space heater, dehumidifier or window AC unit you want off while you’re at work
- A desktop PC and monitor setup with a fixed workday schedule
- Holiday lights and outdoor decor
- A towel warmer, aquarium light or garage beer fridge on a timer
- A bathroom or bedroom lamp you’d rather automate than rewire
Smart plugs also pair naturally with scheduling the rest of your home; if you’re already heading that direction, our beginner’s guide to smart thermostats and lighting explains how the pieces fit together without locking you into one ecosystem.
Advanced Power Strips: Best for Clusters
Where devices cluster — a TV wall, a home office — an advanced power strip is the better tool. It has a control outlet and several controlled outlets. When the control device (the TV, the computer) powers down, the strip cuts power to everything downstream: the soundbar, the console, the monitor, the printer, the desk lamp. One purchase, five or six phantom loads eliminated.
There are two broad types. Tier 1 strips work off that master-and-controlled relationship. Tier 2 strips add occupancy sensors or timers, so the strip shuts down when the room has been empty for a set period — useful when there’s no obvious master device. DOE suggests considering an advanced power strip whenever five or more electronics are ganged together in one spot, and estimates savings of up to $150 over five years from a single strip.
Check with your utility before buying. Many efficiency programs in the U.S. and Canada either discount advanced power strips or ship them free as part of an energy kit.
What You Should Never Cut Power To
This is the part people skip, and it’s the part that causes damage. Do not put any of the following on a smart plug, a timer, or an advanced power strip’s controlled outlets:
- Refrigerators and freezers — compressors don’t tolerate rapid cycling, and food safety isn’t worth $8 a year
- Medical equipment of any kind, including CPAP machines and oxygen concentrators
- Sump pumps and any pump protecting the house from water
- Security systems, cameras, smoke and CO alarms, and the router or hub they depend on
- A DVR that may be recording, or any device in the middle of a firmware update
- Space heaters left running unattended on a schedule while nobody is home
Also worth knowing: most smart plugs are rated for 15 amps but carry a lower continuous-load rating, and many aren’t rated for high-draw resistive appliances at all. Read the label before plugging in anything that makes heat.
A Realistic $20 Starting Plan
You don’t need to smart-plug the whole house. Start here:
- Free: unplug the chargers and power bricks that aren’t attached to anything, and turn off instant-on or rest mode in your game console’s settings menu
- About $10: one basic power strip with a real switch behind the TV, flipped off at night
- About $20: one energy-monitoring smart plug on whatever the meter says is your biggest idle offender
- Next paycheck: one advanced power strip for the home office or entertainment cluster
That sequence gets most of the available savings for a fraction of the cost of outfitting every outlet. Once phantom loads are handled, the next lever is usually when you use power rather than whether — see our guide to time-of-use electricity rates and the broader list of proven ways to lower your electricity bill.
The Bottom Line
Phantom loads are worth attacking because the fix is cheap, immediate, and requires nobody’s approval. But the savings live in a handful of devices, not in every outlet in the house. Measure with a $20 plug meter, put smart plugs on the few genuinely heavy idlers with predictable schedules, put an advanced power strip on your one or two device clusters, and leave the refrigerator, the sump pump and the alarm system alone.
Realistically, most households will claw back somewhere between $50 and $150 a year this way — not life-changing, but it’s recurring, it costs almost nothing to capture, and unlike a heat pump or new windows it’s done by Sunday evening.
Electricity rates, utility rebates and efficiency program offerings change frequently and vary widely by state, province and utility. Check your own utility’s current rate schedule and rebate list before budgeting savings.
