Leaving your Router/Modem on, Costs ?

The_Fat_Controller

Best of luck getting a sensible reply from an ISP call centre !

Turn it off for holidays, leave on at all other times.

Never yet heard of a router or its genuine power supply going up in flames though, much more likely with a dodgy replacement phone charger.

Neil_Jones

Leodogger said:

Neil_Jones said:

Leodogger said:

Troytempest said:

Just been to Spain for 8 weeks and left it on, in fact it is never turned off......

All the reasons above are correct.

So switching it off could save me £20 and doing it just for long term holidays would be OK according to their info.  So I will probably switch it off.

Except its not going to save you £20 is it?

I said the running costs are £20 a year (ish).  If you only power it off for long term holidays (assuming you go twice a year) for two months at a time then that's only going to save you £3.33.  You'd only save £20 if you turned it off altogether, but you'll still be charged by the provider whether its on or not.

You'll spend more in your monthly bill to BT/Plusnet/Sky/whoever than you're going to save in electricity for the router.

Sorry I misread your comment.    I still think it is a safety issue though, so maybe will still switch it off.   I might ring the supplier and ask their opinion too just to be on the safe side.

Well do what you must but I think there's an element of "sledgehammer to crack a nut" here in your thinking.

Your router costs practically nothing to run.  Because it costs practically nothing to run it can't be generating much heat (almost all routers are passively cooled, so they have no cooling of their own because they don't need it because 99% of them don't get that hot).  If they do, its usually because they've ended up in a cupboard or some other lack of ventilated area and therefore have effectively used their own heat output to kill themselves.

We're not talking about an electric heater here that sucks up 1000w per hour.  Only a total moron would leave an electric heater on for two months completely unattended, and at that level of heat output, things will go wrong and very wrong very quickly.

A router if it develops a problem is more likely just to either pop a safety device on the main board which is as good as powering it off to make it safe.

Leodogger

Neil_Jones said:

Leodogger said:

Neil_Jones said:

Leodogger said:

Troytempest said:

Just been to Spain for 8 weeks and left it on, in fact it is never turned off......

All the reasons above are correct.

So switching it off could save me £20 and doing it just for long term holidays would be OK according to their info.  So I will probably switch it off.

Except its not going to save you £20 is it?

I said the running costs are £20 a year (ish).  If you only power it off for long term holidays (assuming you go twice a year) for two months at a time then that's only going to save you £3.33.  You'd only save £20 if you turned it off altogether, but you'll still be charged by the provider whether its on or not.

You'll spend more in your monthly bill to BT/Plusnet/Sky/whoever than you're going to save in electricity for the router.

Sorry I misread your comment.    I still think it is a safety issue though, so maybe will still switch it off.   I might ring the supplier and ask their opinion too just to be on the safe side.

Well do what you must but I think there's an element of "sledgehammer to crack a nut" here in your thinking.

Your router costs practically nothing to run.  Because it costs practically nothing to run it can't be generating much heat (almost all routers are passively cooled, so they have no cooling of their own because they don't need it because 99% of them don't get that hot).  If they do, its usually because they've ended up in a cupboard or some other lack of ventilated area and therefore have effectively used their own heat output to kill themselves.

We're not talking about an electric heater here that sucks up 1000w per hour.  Only a total moron would leave an electric heater on for two months completely unattended, and at that level of heat output, things will go wrong and very wrong very quickly.

A router if it develops a problem is more likely just to either pop a safety device on the main board which is as good as powering it off to make it safe.

Well my energy company is now charging 27.86p per kWh but I don't know how many Kw my router uses, it just sounds expensive over 2 months, but perhaps I am working it out wrong.

The_Fat_Controller

From the TalkTalk Huawei HUB specs the power supply is 12v/1.5A so a maximum of 18W.

The router will never be drawing that much power all the time, 50% would be a good guestimate, maybe even slightly less over a whole day, so let's say 8W.

That is 0.008 kW

Annual consumption is therefore 365 x 24 x 0.008 = 70.08 kWh

Annual cost at 27.86p/kWh = 70.08 x £0.2786 = £19.52 or 5.34 p/day

Leodogger

The_Fat_Controller said:

From the TalkTalk Huawei HUB specs the power supply is 12v/1.5A so a maximum of 18W.

The router will never be drawing that much power all the time, 50% would be a good guestimate, maybe even slightly less over a whole day, so let's say 8W.

That is 0.008 kW

Annual consumption is therefore 365 x 24 x 0.008 = 70.08 kWh

Annual cost at 27.86p/kWh = 70.08 x £0.2786 = £19.52 or 5.34 p/day

You are obviously much more tech savvy than me, I will take your word for it, so for two months I would be saving just about £3.25, so hardly worth switching it off really.

Neil_Jones

Leodogger said:

The_Fat_Controller said:

From the TalkTalk Huawei HUB specs the power supply is 12v/1.5A so a maximum of 18W.

The router will never be drawing that much power all the time, 50% would be a good guestimate, maybe even slightly less over a whole day, so let's say 8W.

That is 0.008 kW

Annual consumption is therefore 365 x 24 x 0.008 = 70.08 kWh

Annual cost at 27.86p/kWh = 70.08 x £0.2786 = £19.52 or 5.34 p/day

You are obviously much more tech savvy than me, I will take your word for it, so for two months I would be saving just about £3.25, so hardly worth switching it off really.

Which is what I pretty much already said

You'll pay more in electricity standing charges and charges to the internet provider than you'll save by powering off the router.  Routers are one of the cheapest electrical devices to run.  Your fridge freezer will use more (even an A+++ with millions of + signs), but you don't switch that off when you go on holiday, do you?

Leodogger

Neil_Jones said:

Leodogger said:

The_Fat_Controller said:

From the TalkTalk Huawei HUB specs the power supply is 12v/1.5A so a maximum of 18W.

The router will never be drawing that much power all the time, 50% would be a good guestimate, maybe even slightly less over a whole day, so let's say 8W.

That is 0.008 kW

Annual consumption is therefore 365 x 24 x 0.008 = 70.08 kWh

Annual cost at 27.86p/kWh = 70.08 x £0.2786 = £19.52 or 5.34 p/day

You are obviously much more tech savvy than me, I will take your word for it, so for two months I would be saving just about £3.25, so hardly worth switching it off really.

Which is what I pretty much already said

You'll pay more in electricity standing charges and charges to the internet provider than you'll save by powering off the router.  Routers are one of the cheapest electrical devices to run.  Your fridge freezer will use more (even an A+++ with millions of + signs), but you don't switch that off when you go on holiday, do you?

Quite true but only because I have lots of food still in it  Points taken, thanks.

Rodders53

https://www.plus.net/help/broadband/router-information/ has the numbers for Plusnet modems to allow more accurate annual power consumption figures.

They vary from 14W to 10W to just under 5W in active mode and those numbers are less in 'standby' when waiting for connected devices to access the internet (or other connected devices in the home).  Identify the one you have to work out how much it uses?

As 1W consumed almost 9 units of electricity per year (£2.70 if 30p/kWh inc 5% vat) then 10W would be £27 (90 units).

If you were to switch off daily for 12 hours then you'd save half that.  You could do it by a timer switch, but they also use electricity to run... so any saving would be reduced by that.

Some TV recording boxes can use a surprisingly large amount of electric whether on or in standby waiting to record (many tens of Watts).  $ky boxes were notorious for this but I think the latest Q ones are a bit better.

cherry76

Mine is always switched off at night and sky hub. I know they are meant to left on at all times but hubby is from the old school you turn off everything not in use. It is difficulty to break his habits in his old age.

Leodogger

cherry76 said:

Mine is always switched off at night and sky hub. I know they are meant to left on at all times but hubby is from the old school you turn off everything not in use. It is difficulty to break his habits in his old age.

I know how he feels, we are the same apart from the router.   Everything goes off at night, but the way this country is going with its energy supply, we soon won't be able to afford the internet at all !