Safe to use Thunderbolt to charge without activating display?

I'm trying to reduce the amount of cables on my desk and want to use the Thunderbolt magsafe instead of the standard adaptor of my macbook pro. But the display itself is quite often not required (since switching to a 15inch mac). When battery power of the Macbook pro is low, can I use the magsafe of the thunderbolt display to charge my mac, without plugging in the actual thunderbolt connector? Thanks!