14 DAY TRIAL // Using a Watts Up Pro Electricity Consumption Meter, Opower measured how much electricity it takes to charge popular smartphones from 0% to 100% full, estimating a meager $0.41/€0.3 in annual costs for the Apple iPhone 5.
Opower took its results for single-charge costs and modeled them across a year to find that, on an individual basis, the iPhone 5 and its competitors (i.e. Galaxy S III) “use a trivial amount of electricity.”
The data showed that the iPhone 5 incurs annual costs of $0.41/€0.3 for charging. The Galaxy also has a nearly invisible footprint on a household’s annual energy bill – $0.53/€0.4.
The Galaxy costs 12 cents more to charge than the iPhone 5 because of its larger battery, Opower said.
However, the company cautions, “While the annual electricity requirements of charging a smartphone are negligible, let’s not forget about the power of multiplication.”
“If we consider the astronomical quantity of smartphones being used around the world today and in the coming years, their collective electricity consumption takes on a more intimidating profile,” says the company.
Analysts are projecting 170 million iPhone 5’s to be sold globally in the next year, which puts a different spin on their aggregate electricity requirements.
Taking into account all iPhone 5’s projected to sell within the year, the collective annual electricity consumption will be equivalent to the annual electricity usage of 54,000 US households, said Opower.
That’s roughly equivalent to the size of Cedar Rapids, the second largest city in Iowa, said Opower, adding, “That’s just for one smartphone model over one year.”
The analysis also mentions that this massive increase in smartphone usage may appear to drive higher overall energy consumption but, in reality, the story is far more complex.
According to Opower, “an increase in smartphone usage is likely to cause lower overall energy consumption.”
