Standby power: the 5-10% of your bill you can't see
Standby power is the bill nobody decided to pay. It's the steady trickle of electricity that appliances draw while they're switched off, idle, or just sitting there with a clock glowing - and across a whole house, running every hour of every day, it commonly adds up to 5-10% of a NZ power bill. That's $130-$260 a year for many homes, spent on devices doing precisely nothing.
The frustrating part is that you can't see it. There's no slider to turn down, no obvious appliance to blame - just a baseline hum that's been built into your bill without you ever noticing. The good news is that a fair chunk of it is easy to switch off once you know where to look.
The usual culprits
Standby load clusters around a few predictable places. None of them is dramatic on its own; the problem is that they run continuously and there are several of them.
- The entertainment cluster. A soundbar, set-top box and streaming stick idling together, often near a games console. The TV itself is no longer the problem - it is the boxes around it, several of which hold a network connection around the clock.
- Console instant-on. This is the big one, and it is a setting rather than a device. A PlayStation or Xbox with instant-on or standby downloads enabled can pull 10-15W around the clock; the same console in its energy-saver mode draws about 1W. Switching that one option is worth more than everything else on this list combined.
- Microwave and oven clocks. The display and clock on a microwave or wall oven sip around 5W forever - often more over a year than the appliance uses doing its actual job.
- An older HDD recorder. A MySky or Sky+ box with a spinning hard drive is in a different league to a modern streaming puck - around 20W against 3W, or $64 a year against $10.
- Instant-on coffee machines. Some keep a boiler warm so they're ready on demand - convenient, but it's a heating element on standby, which is far from trivial.
How to find yours
You don't need to guess. There are two practical ways to measure the phantom load in your own home:
- Read the meter at night. Once everyone's in bed and nothing is actively running, your meter is showing close to your baseline draw - fridge, router, and all the standby loads combined. Watch how fast it ticks over. Anything above a couple of hundred watts overnight is worth investigating.
- Use a plug-in power meter. A $20-30 plug-in meter from a hardware store tells you exactly what a device draws while idle. Plug your TV unit or console in for a day and the number will probably surprise you.
Typical standby draws, device by device
A useful rule of thumb: every 1 watt left on around the clock costs about $3.20 a year at the 36c median variable rate (1W × 24h × 365 ÷ 1,000 = 8.76 kWh, × $0.363). That turns idle watts into real dollars, and shows why a couple of devices matter far more than the rest:
| Device (idle) | Watts | $/year |
|---|---|---|
| Older HDD recorder (MySky, Sky+) | ~20 | $64 |
| Console with Instant-On enabled | ~13 | $41 |
| Wi-Fi router + fibre ONT | ~10 | $32 |
| Microwave clock display | ~5 | $16 |
| Soundbar with network standby | ~4 | $13 |
| Streaming box (Sky Box, Apple TV) | ~3 | $10 |
| Console in energy-saver mode | ~1 | $3 |
| Modern TV on standby | ~0.5 | $2 |
| Phone charger, nothing plugged | ~0.3 | $1 |
That table looks different from the standby advice you may have read years ago, and the reason matters. Since 2013, Australian and New Zealand minimum energy performance standards have capped standby draw at 0.5 watts for products like televisions. The old warning to hunt down every glowing red light is largely obsolete: a modern TV on standby costs about under two dollars a year, and the phone charger everyone frets about is a rounding error.
The real 2026 phantom load is not standby at all - it is things that are genuinely awake. Network devices that hold a connection around the clock, an older hard-drive recorder spinning in the cabinet, and above all a games console left in Instant-On, which can draw more than ten times what the same console uses in its energy-saver mode. Chase the top rows, ignore the bottom ones, and check that console setting.
What to actually do about it
The fix is mostly about cutting power to the clusters that don't need to be live overnight, without making life annoying.
- Switchable power boards. Put the whole entertainment cluster on one board and flick it off at night or when you're out. One switch kills five phantom loads at once. This is the single most effective move.
- Turn off console rest mode. In the settings, set the console to fully power down rather than sleep. You'll wait a little longer to start up, but you stop paying for 24/7 idle. Schedule updates for when it's already on.
- Unplug what you never use. The second TV in the spare room, the spare phone charger, the printer that runs once a month - if it lives on standby and earns nothing, pull the plug.
What's NOT worth chasing
Standby advice gets silly fast, so it's worth being clear about what to leave alone. Some always-on devices are earning their keep, and switching them off saves cents while costing you convenience.
- The fridge. A fridge-freezer isn't on standby - it's working. Turning it off spoils food and saves nothing useful. (A second garage fridge half-full of nothing, on the other hand, is fair game.)
- The router. A Wi-Fi router draws around 10-12W and runs your whole home network, smart devices and security cameras. Switching it off nightly saves maybe a dollar or two a year and re-syncs your connection every morning. Not worth it.
- Anything with a battery that needs topping up - hardwired alarms, some medical devices. Leave them be.
The worked example
Let's tally a fairly ordinary home's phantom load and turn it into a dollar figure at 42c/kWh. The formula throughout is the same: watts ÷ 1000 × 24 hours × 365 days × $0.42.
| Device on standby | Watts | kWh/yr | $/yr |
|---|---|---|---|
| Console in rest mode | 12 | 105 | $44 |
| TV + soundbar + set-top box | 10 | 88 | $37 |
| Microwave + oven clocks | 5 | 44 | $18 |
| Coffee machine (warm) | 8 | 70 | $29 |
| Chargers + odds and ends | 5 | 44 | $18 |
| Total | 40 | 351 | $146 |
The maths on the console row: 12 W ÷ 1000 × 24 × 365 = 105 kWh, and 105 × $0.42 = $44 a year for a switched-off games console. Sum the lot and this not-unusual home is spending around $146 a year - close to $12 a month - on appliances that aren't doing anything. Switch off the entertainment board and the console rest mode alone and you claw back roughly half of that for the price of one power board and thirty seconds in a settings menu.
Work out your own number
Your phantom load depends on how many gadgets you run and your region's rate. Add a phantom load line to the NZ Power Bill Calculator to see how much of your bill is being spent on standby - and which always-on devices are the worst offenders.
Related guides
- The most expensive appliances in NZ homes - where the big always-on loads sit
- Average NZ power bill by region (2026) - the baseline standby chips away at
- Day/night power plans - another way to cut the cost of always-on load