A fact: A cup of coffee is worth more than all the electricity needed to power up those games, songs, videos and apps on your iPad. The annual electricity bill to juice up iPad for a year is $1.36 only. Yeah, you heard that right. This is according to Baskar Vairmohan, a researcher from The Electric Power Research Institute. The Electric Power Research Institute or EPRI is a nonprofit research and development facility funded by the electricity utility companies.
Speaking of electricity consumption, a compact fluorescent bulb of 60-watt consumes $1.61, a desktop PC up to $28.21 and a refrigerator will you pay $65.72. The EPRI researcher conducted the study to examine whether the phenomenal use of tablets and other portable devices like smartphones are increasing power supply, or reducing it. The answer is no. In fact according to government estimates household electricity consumption is about fall for a straight third year as people are buying more energy efficient bulbs, air conditioners, microwaves, and fridges. The weaker economy is also encouraging people to lower their utility bills.
To test the iPad, Mr. Vairmohan took a fully drained iPad battery, fully charged it and measured the required power amount. Taking into mind that the users will juice up their iPads every day, the latest iPad took in 11.86 kilowatt-hours of electricity. The residential price averaging around 11.49 cents per kilowatt-hour, the juice costs only $1.36. So, even if iPads population tripled from the existing 67 million, it would take only one little power plant operating at full capacity to power them all. But there you can go even lower. The iPhone 4 needs only 38 cents a year.
