does a cell phone charger consume power when phone is not connected?

[PG1995]

Hi

Two stupid people were having a discussion, by the way one was me, that whether the cell phone charger consumes power or not when it is not connected to the phone (assuming it is connected to the mains). I was of the opinion that it does consume power. It outputs DC current which can be thought of as a continuous push of electrons. Think of someone pushing a wall. Although, in physics terms, no work is being done, 'biological' energy is still being invested. Likewise, electrons at the tip of charger's pin which goes into the cell phone are continuously pushed but they can't flow outward. It's just like a water pump which is continuously pumping water but the pumped water is not used for any useful activity. I have noticed that charger, connected to the mains, gets hot even when no cell phone is connected. Please let me know if I'm correct. Thank you.

Regards
PG

 

[SANDEEP ANAND]

A litttle bit of power consume when mobile charger connected while mobile is not connnected to the charger because in mobile charger are mostly based on SMPS, so it consume abit power.
REGARDS

 

[alexan_e]

There are two types of power supply, the ones using a classic transformer to reduce the mains voltage and the switching ones.
In either case the input current consumption is directly related to the output current consumption, if you don't have any load connected then the mains consumption will be very low but not 0.
Usually the switching power supplies have some sense circuit that turns off the circuit when there is no load connected so it can probably achieve even lower power consumption when no load is connected compared to the classic transformer psu.

Alex

---------- Post added at 11:49 ---------- Previous post was at 11:44 ----------

Take a look at **broken link removed**
the real transformer will not have this ideal behavior because there are some losses involved but you can get the idea.

Alex

 

[Embedded_Geek]

Little power is wasted in the transformer itself at the primary coil of the transformer. So, practically the power consumption is not zero although it is very less. When you design circuits even smallest power consumption has to be taken into account.

Ideally the resistance of the primary coil is zero but practically it is not, so little amount of power is wasted there.

 

[pranam77]

Compared to the power consumed while the charger is connected to the phone,a fraction of power is consumed while the charger is plugged but not connected to a cellphone. The same happens with a TV in standby mode. Take this as your next discussion..

Cheers