How much does it cost you in electricity to run your computer?

The_Fear

I moved into a new flat last year and had to pay for electricity for the first time in three years.

I was shocked to discover that in the first month, it came to £80.

Then from December to January, it topped a whopping £140.00.

I did some experimentation with leaving heating on and off and found that I was paying approx £56 a month to keep my heating on all day (I live in a small flat with virtually no natural light, a low heat setting is the only way to get my clothes dry + ensure it isn't sub-zero when I get home in cold months).

I still couldn't figure out where the rest of the consumption was coming from, so I bought a measuring gadget from Maplin.

Turns out that keeping my mac on for six hours a day (it's my work tool, and my tv and radio) and approx 15 hours each weekend day is costing me £50 a month.

Needless to say, I'll be reading a lot more from now on.

Call me naive, but I was shocked

I'm going to miss my mac

esuhl

Mine uses ~200W, which (at 15p/kWh) is about 3p/hr... So leaving it on for 15hrs would cost 45p. Do that each day for a month and it would cost £13.50...

closed

Desktop or laptop? You're on a poor rate (or dual rate/economy 7) if a laptop is costing that much, a typical laptop should be around £40/pa or less running 24/7 assuming a bit of charging now and again.

http://www.apple.com/uk/environment/reports/

banger9365

i think you need to find a better tariff for your lecky ,ive router ,hubs ,cctv ,servers,on 24/7 and the main pc on at least 8hours a day ,and every thing a normal house has on for a lot less than what you mac,tv,uses

torbrex

My desktop uses 2.45 pence/hour when on.

debitcardmayhem

The_Fear wrote: »

I moved into a new flat last year and had to pay for electricity for the first time in three years.

I was shocked to discover that in the first month, it came to £80.

Then from December to January, it topped a whopping £140.00.

I did some experimentation with leaving heating on and off and found that I was paying approx £56 a month to keep my heating on all day (I live in a small flat with virtually no natural light, a low heat setting is the only way to get my clothes dry + ensure it isn't sub-zero when I get home in cold months).

I still couldn't figure out where the rest of the consumption was coming from, so I bought a measuring gadget from Maplin.

Turns out that keeping my mac on for six hours a day (it's my work tool, and my tv and radio) and approx 15 hours each weekend day is costing me £50 a month.

Needless to say, I'll be reading a lot more from now on.

Call me naive, but I was shocked

I'm going to miss my mac

Try working for 8 hours a day, and you will earn 33% more with your tool, you can buy us all a drink with the excess :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

A.Penny.Saved

Mine is about 2.7p an hour due to the monitor mainly as it's a CRT. The PC itself is only about 1.3p an hour. Add the router to that.

That is at the lower discounted rate after using about 350 units which is where most of my usage is counted. It's probably the same for many other people.

My PC itself uses about 110 watts when 3 drives are in standby which is how it is most of the time. The monitor will at least double that.

S0litaire

My desktop + LCD pulls 105w under full load (intel Dual core Atom ION)
so that's 9.5h for every 1Kwh used @ 14p per Kwh
That's around 1.4p per hour total.

My laptop is around 85w

Put it this way! you'll save more money by not boiling a kettle as often!! ^_^
Or stick on an extra jumper or 2 and keep the heating off a bit longer.

Or use your MAC as a heater... ^_^


Saying that I just got a pre-payment Power and Gas meters fitted last month!! Got my spending down to £1 of gas and £1 of Electricity a day. (extra clothings and a exorcise bike does wonders keeping you warm!! lol)

John_Gray

Are you absolutely certain that none of the other flats is using the electricity shown on your meter? By that I mean, have you turned absolutely everything off in your flat (yes, fridge too, for a few minutes) and looked at the meter with a torch, to see if it stops completely?

SnowTiger

The_Fear wrote: »

I still couldn't figure out where the rest of the consumption was coming from, so I bought a measuring gadget from Maplin.

Turns out that keeping my mac on for six hours a day (it's my work tool, and my tv and radio) and approx 15 hours each weekend day is costing me £50 a month.

That seems high, however I have found the readings produced by those measuring devices a bit erratic and unreliable.

Anyway, you have the three gadgets you mention switched on for 60 hours a week, that's about 270 hours a month (60 hours * 4.5 weeks). On average they cost you £0.185 per hour (£50 / 270 hours) to run.

The radio is probably so cheap to run that it's not worth worry about. So, you're paying more than 18p per hour to run a computer and TV. That's very expensive. How much are you paying per kWh?

Even using the high figures list on the WWW for appliance energy consumption, I'd be surprised if a modern computer and TV used more than 0.5kWh per hour together in total.

HappyMJ

My laptop has a 90W power supply but consumes on average 35W. Over the year it costs about £35 to run 24/7.