When trying to save energy around your home it is important to know just how much energy each device plugged into wall sockets use. For example, how much energy does a night light use? A typical home may have a dozen night lights, and if they are not the newer LED kind, may be wasting energy.

A typical night light using an incandescent bulb uses around eight watts. So, how much does this cost you yearly and is it even worth worrying about? Take the following example to see how much night lights cost to operate:

If you have five night lights in your home, using eight watts each, that’s forty watts being used. Most night lights have a sensor that shuts them down in daytime. Assuming your night lights only work for about twelve hours a day, that’s almost 500 watts of energy used per day.  Assuming an average cost per kilowatt hour of twelve cents, that’s about six cents a day, or $21 a year. While that does not seem like a lot, combined with other energy wasters in your home it adds up.  LED night lights use only about one watt, barely making your meter turn.

A great way to find out how much energy things in your home are using is to use a Kill A Watt power meter, such as the one seen below.

The Kill A Watt Power Use Meter, click on photo for details.

Power use monitors such as the one seen above can help you find “phantom loads” or devices that appear to be off but are costing you by wasting energy. A typical home may have a dozen or more phantom loads that are using energy without you knowing about it. Such phantom load devices include unused satellite receivers, chargers, VCR and DVD players, entertainment devices, etc. For more info on how to find and eliminate phantom loads in your home see the following article: What Are Phantom Loads