With many people having less spare money these days we can sometimes try to think of ways to save money and cut back on things we buy or use, but it has been revealed that regularly recharging the new Apple iPad costs peanuts.

According to an article on AppleInsider it costs less to keep recharging a fully drained new iPad every other day for a year than it does to run a 60w compact fluorescent light bulb continuously over the same time according to new research.

The Electric Power Research Institute that is an independent non-profit organization, which focuses on research into electricity and development, has found that devices such as the new iPad can help reduce the high power demand that has come as a result of the Information Age.

As the demand for smartphones and tablets grows the EPRI wondered if this was having a negative impact on power consumption by consumers, but it was found that the constant charging of a device every other day from a full discharge costs just pennies each day, and is a lot less when compared to the likes of desktop PCs.

The testing used a variety Apple’s mobile devices that included the iPad that has now sold more than 67 million units, against other appliances found in the household. Calculations found that the average energy use of all iPads in the market comes to about 590 gigawatt hours per year, and if the amount of iPads in use tripled over the next two years the power needed could easily be handled by two 250 megawatt power stations, but only running at fifty percent.

Apple’s latest version of the iPad features a high capacity 42.5 watt hour batter unit, which uses under 11.86 kilowatt hours of electricity over a one year period. This compares to a 42-inch plasma HDTV that uses 358 kWh or the average laptop that uses 72.3 kWh, and compared to a 60-watt CFL light bulb that uses 14 kWh that costs around $8.31 a year to run while the new iPad costs $1.61 a year.

This cost will obviously vary on your supplier but it shows how efficient modern technology is becoming, and this is likely to improve even more going forward. Are you surprised by these figures?