Photo by Álvaro Serrano on Unsplash

Ever felt guilty for charging your phone in someone else’s house? Well, don’t. The annual cost of charging a typical smartphone every single day is 25 cents. Not 25 cents a day, but 25 cents a year.

It’s not too different with your other gizmos. A tablet costs just over a dollar to charge annually, and that’s only if you plug it in every day. With a device like the iPad – which lasts for days without a charge – that number is even smaller. What about your laptop? Well, according to those who did the tests, the average laptop uses around 72kWh per year, resulting in $8 divided among 12 electricity bills. A plasma TV used for five hours straight every day will use some 360 kWh within a year, adding $45 to your expenses. Other items on the list include:

• Xbox: $40 per year
• 60 Watt lightbulb: $26 per year
• LED lightbulb: $4.40 per year
• Desktop computer: $36 per year
• Tesla: $450 per year (compared to a traditional automobile which costs $2,000 per year to fuel up)
• Water heater: $600 per year
• Microwave oven: 4 cents (for 15 minutes on high)
• Fridge: $42 per year

Individually, every item on this list seems cheap to power up. Add them up and you quickly rack up a small fortune in energy bills. Which means it’s always a good idea to look into the cheaper alternatives of some of these items, such as LED lightbulbs or an electric vehicle. Research is constantly being made to achieve more efficient batteries for our devices, and if this report is to be believed, we are really close to witnessing a revolution of the first order in the energy department. If you think it costs a lot to power your Lihium-ion gadgets today, keep in mind that the Ni-Cd batteries from 15 years ago were even more expensive to charge. For a bigger list of power drainers (and how much you end up paying to power them), click here.