Background Electricity Usage 8760 hours a year

ragz_2

I bought an energy monitor the other day and have been going around the house measuring things. The Xbox seems to draw 9w on standby, which is around £15 a year. It does make quite a noise and have an annoying light (from the power box, not the machine itself) so I wasn't surprised, but DH was. He has agreed to turn it off. 

Ultrasonic

Sea_Shell said:

I didn't think sky boxes and routers liked being turned on and off daily?

I did some testing earlier and my router uses about 8 W but like you I think they're best powered on all the time. I do want to look at whether it might be possible to set the WiFi to be powered off overnight to try to reduce energy use though.

I did find a radio that was using 3 W when not off at the wall that I'll save a little there.

Benny2020

On my BT router you can go into the software on your laptop and turn down the blue light to save a bit.

Sea_Shell

Ultrasonic said:

Sea_Shell said:

I didn't think sky boxes and routers liked being turned on and off daily?

I did some testing earlier and my router uses about 8 W but like you I think they're best powered on all the time. I do want to look at whether it might be possible to set the WiFi to be powered off overnight to try to reduce energy use though.

I did find a radio that was using 3 W when not off at the wall that I'll save a little there.

We have a Plusnet (BT) router...so will investigate the settings via the settings portal.

We've already reduced the brightness of the blue display bar...far too bright!!

Benny2020

On the plus side my solar panels have kicked out 21 kwh so far today and still kicking 2.2kw as we speak and 235 kwh so far this month. Everyone should have them.
No gas used this week, house and water heated by solar power.

cx6

8w router x 8760  uses about 70 units a year.

my april price cap is 48p so say 50p so router is £35 a year - maybe 50% more come october. Just the router ! 

there is no problem or harm caused by turning a router on or off whenever you want

cx6

burglar alarm could be using quite a bit - powering the circuitry and of couse a number of individual PIRs

I did read somewhere but can't now find it that expect between 20-40 watts but obviously yours may vary

taking 30 watts then 30 x 8760 = 262 units or £131 a year, more come october.

Ultrasonic

cx6 said:

8w router x 8760  uses about 70 units a year.

my april price cap is 48p so say 50p so router is £35 a year - maybe 50% more come october. Just the router ! 

there is no problem or harm caused by turning a router on or off whenever you want

I think you're mixing up the electricity standing charge and unit price there. April price cap unit prices are in the 27-30 p/kWh range depending where you live. I've just switched to a fix paying 38 p/kWh though.

There definitely are downsides of regularly switching routers off.

I've not tested it yet as I'm watching the F1 qualifying but I've found my router has a simple button to turn the WiFi on/off so I'll be interested to see what difference this makes.

Sea_Shell said:

We have a Plusnet (BT) router...so will investigate the settings via the settings portal.

We've already reduced the brightness of the blue display bar...far too bright!!

I had that router until recently, and relied on the blue light as a sort of night light in my hallway!

cx6

yes correct sorry 28p not 48p apologies.

Ultrasonic

Looks like I can save 3-4 W by switching the WiFi off on my router. The question will be whether I can get into the habit of doing this often enough to make a worthwhile saving.