It may be hard to believe, but what I said in the title of this article seems to be true, at least if we take it as credible the information provided by the Electric Power Research Institute based in the USA. According to them, an iPad tablet needs $1.36 worth of electricity annually to function without problems and we are talking about an extraordinarily small amount that, probably, none of you would have expected to know. To find out how much it costs to charge the tablet, those from EPRI assumed that users charge the iPad 3 tablet once every two days, which in a year consumes 11.86 KW, and at an average price of 11.49 cents per kw/h the tablet would require 1.36 $ annually to be charged.
For the iPad test, Vairmohan measured the amount of power used to charge up an iPad with a drained battery. He assumed that users would charge up every other day. Over a year, the latest version of the iPad consumed 11.86 kilowatt-hours of electricity. (Older versions consume somewhat less power.) The juice would cost $1.36 at the US average residential price of 11.49 cents per kilowatt-hour. By comparison, a 60-watt compact fluorescent bulb costs $1.61, a desktop PC adds up to $28.21 and a refrigerator runs you $65.72.
If we are to think about the iPhone 4, then the annual charging cost would be only 38 cents and in the case of the iPhone 4S there would be no differences considering the fact that the devices work on the basis of the same battery. Those from EPRI claim that a 60W fluorescent bulb needs $1.61 annually to operate, a computer costs $28.21 annually and a refrigerator takes Americans out of their pockets approximately $66 annually. Practically, a computer needs energy that costs 20 times more and a refrigerator increases the costs almost 60 times compared to the iPad tablet. The calculations are more than interesting, but it is hard to say if they are true.
