Standby power is the energy devices use while switched off but still plugged in and ready. It is real, and across a houseful of gadgets it adds up to a noticeable yearly sum, but it is also widely exaggerated and misdirected. Knowing which devices matter saves you both money and the faff of chasing trivial savings.
How much it actually is
Each device on standby sips only a few watts, but a modern home has dozens of them, and a few watts running every hour of every day quietly accumulates. Totted up, the always-on load of a typical household runs to a modest but worthwhile annual cost. It will never rival the heating or the tumble dryer, so keep it in proportion, but it is real money for very little effort to reclaim.
The worst offenders
Not all standby is equal. The biggest culprits are devices that stay genuinely active rather than truly asleep: set-top boxes and digital recorders that keep listening and recording, games consoles in a connected standby, older equipment with power-hungry transformers, and anything with a clock, display or instant-on feature. A plug-in energy monitor reveals these in seconds, and the readings are often surprising.
Where unplugging is pointless
By contrast, a phone charger left in the wall with nothing attached draws so little that switching it off saves pennies a year, despite the persistent myth. The same goes for most modern low-standby electronics. Religiously unplugging trivial devices is effort spent for almost nothing, the very fussing-over-pennies this site warns against. Spend that energy on the real users instead.
A sensible plan
Rather than crawling behind furniture nightly, target the worst offenders. Put the television, console and the cluster of boxes around it on a single switched extension lead and turn the lot off at night with one switch. Choose true-off rather than standby on devices that offer it. Leave genuinely low-draw items alone. That gets you nearly all the saving for almost none of the bother, which is the right trade every time.