The Need For More Efficient Phone Chargers
June 9, 2020
Samsung wants to do its part to conserve electricity and reduce the amount of plastic waste that it produces. Since 2012, the company has been looking at ways of improving the efficiency of its chargers. When left idle on a power strip, like any other electrical appliance, phone chargers still consume power. This means that you are paying for electricity that you aren’t using.
Unless said power strips/outlets are switched off, appliances that are plugged in, will continue to draw power indefinitely. That is why Samsung has taken it upon itself to reduce the amount of electricity drawn by its chargers to 20mW when left untethered to any device. And since that time, it has incorporated this tech into chargers of its entire product range.
In addition to this, the company has also improved the efficiency of these chargers, allowing them to operate with an energy efficiency rating of 80%. A charger that is able to maximize its use of electricity that it draws from an outlet, will require less time to charge a device, thus, needing less time to remain connected to said outlet.
Achieving this has been somewhat of a challenge for the Korean electronics giant. The advent of fast chargers have presented many challenges to preserving said efficiency. The power demands of 15W, 25W, 45W and higher chargers are much greater than that of standard power bricks, but despite this, Samsung says that it has managed to overcome said hurdles.
Since 2014, the company claims that its environmentally conscious smartphone chargers have cumulatively, saved 13 million kilowatts (kW) of energy. This, it says, is nearly equivalent to the energy output of five hydroelectric power plants. It’s a quite an achievement considering how little thought we give to our phone chargers for their entire service life.
In order to reduce its impact on the environment, Samsung has been using recycled materials to (post consumer materials or PCM) build its line of chargers. And since 2019, 5,000 tons of PCM have been used for this purpose. This way, the company believes that it can continue to deliver efficient and well-built power bricks while doing its bit to help reduce plastic waste.
