How Much Does Standby Power Cost? Vampire Power Numbers for 2026

Standby power is the electricity a device consumes while it is switched off, in sleep mode, or sitting idle but plugged into the wall. The DOE Energy Saver puts it at 5 to 10 percent of residential energy use and as much as $100 a year for the average household. ENERGY STAR puts the national total at more than 100 billion kWh and $11 billion a year, which is the same number stated from the other end of the pipe.

The math on a single household is the same appliance formula that runs every other RunWatts page: watts × hours ÷ 1,000 × your state rate. Standby loads change one variable and not the others. Hours is always 8,760 a year, because these devices never switch off. Watts is small per device but adds up across ten or fifteen of them. At the April 2026 U.S. residential average from the EIA Electric Power Monthly of 18.05¢/kWh, every continuous watt of phantom load costs $1.58 a year. Ten watts costs $15.81. A hundred watts costs $158.12.

The breakdown below uses watt figures published by manufacturers and measured by the DOE and ENERGY STAR programs. Dollar figures use 8,760 hours per year times the April 2026 national average rate. Your state rate can move every figure up or down by a factor of two or three.

Entertainment is the biggest category. A modern smart TV draws 5 to 15 watts in standby to keep the network connection alive and the voice assistant listening. That is $7.91 to $23.72 a year per TV. A cable or satellite DVR pulls 35 to 40 watts continuously because the tuners and the hard drive never spin down, which lands at $55.34 to $63.25 a year, often the single largest standby line item in the house. A streaming stick or set-top box (Roku, Apple TV, Fire TV) sits at 2 to 4 watts, or $3.16 to $6.32 a year, and a soundbar in standby draws 1 to 3 watts.

Game consoles split sharply by setting. A PS5 in rest mode pulls 1.5 watts, which costs $2.37 a year. An Xbox Series X on Microsoft's default Instant On setting pulls 12 watts, or $18.97 a year. The full breakdown is in the PS5 electricity cost analysis and the Xbox electricity cost analysis. The console choice itself is not the bill line. The standby setting is.

The kitchen is small per device but consistent. A microwave clock display draws 2 to 4 watts, or $3.16 to $6.32 a year. A coffee maker with a clock or programmable timer pulls 1 to 3 watts. A countertop oven or instant pot with a digital display sits at 1 to 2 watts. None of these are large on their own, and most kitchens run five to seven of them at once.

The home office is where chargers add up. A laptop charger left plugged in without the laptop connected still pulls 1 to 5 watts, depending on the brick, and costs $1.58 to $7.91 a year per charger. A monitor in standby draws 1 to 3 watts. A laser printer in sleep mode pulls 2 to 8 watts, or $3.16 to $12.65 a year. The full math on the printer side is in the laser printer electricity cost guide, which is most of where the printer category gets its annual total.

Laundry, HVAC, and miscellaneous. A washer or dryer with a digital display pulls 1 to 5 watts in standby. A smart thermostat is 1 to 5 watts, though that spend is generally worth it for the cycling control it provides on the heating and cooling side. A garage door opener radio sits at 1 to 3 watts. A Wi-Fi router is technically always-on rather than standby, but at 10 watts continuous it costs $15.81 a year.

A representative U.S. home with a smart TV, a cable DVR, a game console on default settings, a smart soundbar, a microwave with a clock, a coffee maker, two laptop chargers, a printer, a Wi-Fi router, and a smart thermostat lands somewhere between 40 and 100 watts of continuous phantom load. At 18.05¢/kWh, that range works out to:

40 watts (light, mostly newer ENERGY STAR devices): 350.4 kWh a year, $63.25. 75 watts (typical household): 657 kWh a year, $118.59. 100 watts (heavier electronics load, multiple TVs and consoles): 876 kWh a year, $158.12.

The DOE's 5 to 10 percent figure assumes a household using about 10,500 kWh a year, which is close to the national residential average. A 657 kWh standby load lands at 6.3 percent of that, near the middle of the published range. Households with an older cable DVR, two gaming consoles on Instant On, and three smart TVs can clear the 10 percent ceiling without trying.

The household figures above use the national average. The April 2026 EIA Electric Power Monthly puts Louisiana at 12.44¢/kWh and Hawaii at 39.79¢/kWh, a spread of more than three times for the same standby load. A typical household at 75 watts of phantom load (657 kWh a year) costs:

Louisiana (12.44¢/kWh): $81.74 a year. Texas (~14.8¢/kWh): $97.24. National average (18.05¢/kWh): $118.59. New York (~25¢/kWh): $164.25. California (~31¢/kWh): $203.67. Hawaii (39.79¢/kWh): $261.40.

Hawaii and California are the only states where household standby power approaches what an average home spends on a major individual appliance. In every other state it sits closer to the cost of a refrigerator or a clothes dryer running at typical use, which puts it in the middle of the household appliance list, not at the bottom. The electricity rates by state guide has the current 2026 rate for every state, and the calculator on the homepage runs the math at your specific rate.

The useful frame is not the 5 to 10 percent statistic. It is what 75 watts of continuous phantom load costs versus the actual running appliances in the house. At the national average:

Household standby (75W, 24/7): $118.59 a year. Refrigerator (typical): $90 to $130 a year. Clothes dryer (4 loads/week): $90 to $130. Ceiling fan (60W, 4 hours/day): $15.81. 9W LED bulb (8 hours/day): $4.74. Xbox Series X (3 hours/day, gameplay only): $39.53.

The typical household's standby load costs more per year than a modern refrigerator and about as much as running the dryer all year. It costs more than seven and a half times what a ceiling fan costs to run four hours a day, and roughly three times what an Xbox Series X costs in active gameplay. Phantom load is not a small line item. It is a mid-pack household appliance with no on switch, paying rent on the bill every month. The most expensive appliances list ranks every household load against the same rate.

The standard fix is a smart power strip with switched outlets, an occupancy sensor, or a master/follower configuration that cuts power to peripherals when the primary device shuts off. A reasonable strip runs about $25. Four of them, placed in the rooms where the standby loads cluster (living room behind the TV, home office under the desk, kitchen counter, bedroom), cover the bulk of the phantom-load footprint for $100.

A four-strip deployment that eliminates 50 to 75 watts of continuous standby saves $80 to $120 a year at the U.S. average rate. That is a 10 to 15 month payback on $100 of strips, and the strips last for years after that. In California and Hawaii, the payback drops to 5 to 7 months because the saved kWh are worth more per unit. The math gets harder to argue with the higher the state rate.

The catch is which devices to put on the switched outlets. A cable DVR scheduled to record overnight programming cannot be cut. A Wi-Fi router that serves a smart-home system or a security camera array cannot be cut. A streaming stick used by every member of the household at unpredictable hours is annoying to cut. The targets that actually work: gaming consoles in second-tier rooms, printers in home offices that print once a week, laptop chargers left in walls between travel, kitchen appliances with clocks that no one reads, and the TV plus soundbar plus streaming box stack in a room that is only used in the evenings.

Before buying any hardware, three settings changes recover most of the standby savings from the most expensive devices in the house, for free.

Switch the Xbox to Energy Saver. The default Instant On setting pulls 12 watts continuously. Energy Saver drops standby to 0.5 watts in exchange for a 30 second cold boot. The annual savings per console runs $16 to $18 at the U.S. average rate depending on how many hours a day the console is actually being played, and more in expensive states. The setting is in Profile and System then Settings then General then Power options. The whole exercise takes under a minute.

Disable Quick Start on the TV. Most modern smart TVs ship with a quick start setting that keeps the network and processor partially active for instant wake. Turning it off cuts standby draw from 5 to 15 watts down to under 1 watt, saving $6 to $22 a year per TV. The tradeoff is a 5 to 10 second cold start, which most households do not notice.

Return the cable DVR if you do not use it. If the household watches mostly streaming, the cable box is the worst single standby load in the house at $55 to $63 a year, and returning it to the cable company is the largest single-line savings on this list. If the cable subscription remains for live sports or a specific channel, consider downgrading to a cable card or a basic receiver that pulls less standby.

Three observations from running the standby numbers on a representative American home.

1. The DVR is almost always the worst line item. A cable or satellite DVR pulls 35 to 40 watts continuously, which costs $55 to $63 a year by itself. If the household streams nearly everything, this is the single highest-leverage cut available. Return the box and the entire household standby line drops by roughly half.

2. Game console standby beats game console gameplay. An Xbox on Instant On costs more per year in standby ($18.97) than the same console costs to actually play 3 hours a day in gameplay if you only game on weekends. For households with two consoles, a single settings change saves more than $35 a year for free.

3. Small loads stop being small at scale. A 2 watt microwave clock looks like nothing. A 2 watt microwave clock running 24/7 across ten years costs $31.60 in electricity, more than the discount you got on the microwave at Costco. The category as a whole moves the needle precisely because no single device feels like it does.

The math is simple: every continuous watt costs $1.58 a year at the U.S. average. The calculator on the homepage runs the same formula at your state's actual rate, and the appliance wattage chart covers running loads in the same way. Standby is the part of the bill no one reads, paying $1 to $2 a month for every plug in the house that does nothing visible while plugged in.

Standby power costs the average U.S. household $100 to $158 a year, or 5 to 10 percent of residential electricity, with the cable DVR, the gaming console on default settings, and the smart TV stack accounting for most of it. Every continuous watt of standby load costs $1.58 a year at the April 2026 U.S. residential average of 18.05¢/kWh, $1.09 in Louisiana, and $3.49 in Hawaii. A $100 deployment of switched power strips saves $80 to $120 a year for most households, and three free settings changes (Xbox Energy Saver, TV Quick Start off, return the unused DVR) recover most of the savings without buying anything.

The calculator on the homepage runs the math at your state's actual rate, and the state rates guide shows what every continuous watt costs where you live.