Last month saw a small but significant step for energy savings. The top cellphone vendors announced an energy star rating for chargers.

Your charger wastes a half watt when plugged in, without a phone connected. Most users keep their chargers plugged in. That's 100 megawatts watts down the drain, in India.

A five-star rating would mean negligible wasted “no-load power”.

You might think: This doesn't affect me much. Right. The half watt difference would make very little impact on your electricity bill over a year.

But standby power wastage in your house could add up to hundreds of watts.

Prasanto Kumar Roy Chief Editor

So on a lazy Sunday this month, draw up a notepad, and spend an hour adding it all up. It could be the most useful hour you've spent.

Go room to room. Look for a device, anything that is on-but is not being used.

Stabilizers and transformers are top culprits. If you have an AC with a stabilizer, and the stabilizer is on, you're wasting 50 watts right there: feel the nice warm stabilizer. If you have an accessible switch to power the whole thing off, use it. If you don't, install one.

If you have any charger or adaptor plugged in-including a laptop-switch it off when not in use.

Other standby power culprits:
Entertainment consoles? That TV, stereo, DVD player, cable or satellite decoder... all add up to over 50 watts when not in use! If you don't have a common power switch for the console, install one. Power off the whole console when not in use.

A computer and UPS? For long periods of non-use, power off the UPS-input and output. (And if you have an inverter with a UPS mode, you don't even need a UPS: you save more standby power this way.)

Lights that need to be mostly on--such as in the passageway or staircase? Make sure they're low-power CFLs. Or try LED lights. You can save another 50 watts that way.

Battery rechargers: When the light turns green, the battery is charged. Overcharging beyond that wastes power and reduces battery life.

Switching off devices when not in use not only saves you electricity, but also protects your electronics from power surges and spikes.

Happy savings.