Nelson's Weblog: tech / av-power-consumption

A/V gear power consumption

I got my first electric bill for my new house and suddenly I'm on a power-saving kick. I broke out my trusty Kill-A-Watt and measured how much power the various bits of my new audiovisual rack use.

Idle, my rack consumes an astonishing 80 watts. That's like leaving a lightbulb on all the time, and at my punitive rate of $0.35 / kilowatt-hour it's costing me $20 / month just to own this rack. What's it doing?

38W Tivo (Standby mode saves 2W)
35W Five Sonos players
4W Network switch
2W Superfluous power conditioner lights

Of course, it takes more power to actually use the gear.

32W Listening to music upstairs (1¢/hr): Running three amplified Sonos zone players
85W Main amplifiers (3¢/hr): Just turning on the amplifier and the subwoofer amp, not actually using it.
4W Watching TV: The Tivo consumes so much power when idle that actually watching it doesn't add much. Of course, I need the amplifiers on too.
25W Watching Blu-Ray (1¢/hr): The disc player is hungry. It seems to use this much power even when sitting idle at a disc menu.
184W Playing GTA4 on an Xbox 360 (6¢/hr): What an inefficient beast. It generates so much heat I have to leave the door open, too. Saves about 30W when sitting idle on the dashboard.

I don't begrudge the operating costs when actually doing stuff, even the Xbox. But 80 watts when idle is terrible. The Tivo is never truly idle, I can understand what it's doing with the power. But why do the amplified Sonos players consume 7W each when doing nothing? At least I can turn off the stupid power conditioner lights.

tech
2008-10-09 01:46 Z


Mastodon @nelson@tech.lgbt Linkblog Sun 2024-11-17 City99 console font Sat 2024-11-16 Lorraine Gervais Sill Justin's Linklog Thune 2004 blog campaign Fri 2024-11-15 Open source garage door Thu 2024-11-14 NZ parliament protest Wed 2024-11-13 bzfs BenQ Programming Monitor Tue 2024-11-12 California slow vote counting Sand pile visualization Miniflux The Animal in Decorative Art Mon 2024-11-11 MyNoise Criterion Collection Supercut Sun 2024-11-10 ActivityBot Chair causes display failure Neft Daşları Fri 2024-11-08 Self-hosted Bluesky Red crab migration Search Archives 2023 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2022 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2021 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2020 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2019 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2018 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2017 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2016 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2015 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2014 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2013 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2012 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2011 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2010 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2009 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2008 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2007 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2006 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2005 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2004 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2003 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2002 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 2001 12 11 10 09 08 07 One good site MDN Nelson Minar nelson@monkey.org Blog licensed under a Creative Commons License		A/V gear power consumption I got my first electric bill for my new house and suddenly I'm on a power-saving kick. I broke out my trusty Kill-A-Watt and measured how much power the various bits of my new audiovisual rack use. Idle, my rack consumes an astonishing 80 watts. That's like leaving a lightbulb on all the time, and at my punitive rate of $0.35 / kilowatt-hour it's costing me $20 / month just to own this rack. What's it doing? 38W Tivo (Standby mode saves 2W) 35W Five Sonos players 4W Network switch 2W Superfluous power conditioner lights Of course, it takes more power to actually use the gear. 32W Listening to music upstairs (1¢/hr) Running three amplified Sonos zone players 85W Main amplifiers (3¢/hr) Just turning on the amplifier and the subwoofer amp, not actually using it. 4W Watching TV The Tivo consumes so much power when idle that actually watching it doesn't add much. Of course, I need the amplifiers on too. 25W Watching Blu-Ray (1¢/hr) The disc player is hungry. It seems to use this much power even when sitting idle at a disc menu. 184W Playing GTA4 on an Xbox 360 (6¢/hr) What an inefficient beast. It generates so much heat I have to leave the door open, too. Saves about 30W when sitting idle on the dashboard. I don't begrudge the operating costs when actually doing stuff, even the Xbox. But 80 watts when idle is terrible. The Tivo is never truly idle, I can understand what it's doing with the power. But why do the amplified Sonos players consume 7W each when doing nothing? At least I can turn off the stupid power conditioner lights. tech 2008-10-09 01:46 Z Nelson's Weblog • tech → ago, bad, bittorrent, blosxom, dotnet, good, hqnx, iphone, mac, phone, photo, python, webservices