An energy-consuming morning

Day 1: For the first day of my energy reduction journey, I’ve decided to focus on daily practices, to understand my energy consumption habits. Analysing the morning, for example today I woke up, I unplugged my phone, washed my face, got dressed and had breakfast.

The first thought I’ve had about this routine is checking how much is my phone charger consuming, since I leave it plugged for the whole night. Surprisingly, its energy consumption is very low: a Apple A1400 charger consumes just 7.2 Watt per hour (not kWh!). Since it takes two hours to get fully charged, the average consumption is 0,0144 kWh. My second thought was concerning the consumption while the charger is in the plug without the phone connected: evidence shows that the energy consumption in this case is almost zero, which makes the lazy part of me happy, not having to unplug it everyday. I usually charge the phone during the night, which means it stays plugged for seven hours approximately, so I was wondering what’s the consumption when the phone is connected, but already fully charged: it consumes 3 W, which would be 0,0015 kW per night. Since it is a waste of energy, I’ll try to charge it during the day, so that I can unplug it when it’s already charged. Moreover, I’ve decided to keep me from being hypnotised by Instagram reels for hours, which is an activity that drains not only my personal energy, but also my phone’s battery, so that I won’t have to charge it more than once a day, which is something that sometimes happens.

For breakfast I usually warm a cup of milk in the microwave for one minute. Mine has a consumption of 1000 W, which means everyday I’m using 0,017 kWh for warming my milk. Then I have a toasted slice of bread with peanut butter. Ariete Qubi toaster has a consumption of 760 W and it takes around 5 minutes, which means it consumes 0,06 kWh. I’ll probably try to go for a cold breakfast, maybe milk and cereals, in order to save 0,08 kWh.

Then I start working on my computer, which I usually need to charge everyday. An Asus VivoBook charger consumes 45 W and it takes the computer around three hours to be fully charged, amounting to 0,135 kWh. Probably it’s the same thing as the phone charger, but in this case it happens more often that I’m using the computer while it’s charging, extending the consumption duration of the charger up to 6 hours, which means consuming 0,27 kWh. An energy efficient habit could be being careful not to use the computer while charging and trying to have it fully charged before using it again, then unplug it.