I'm finally getting around to thinking about replacing a plasma TV (not full HD, only SD tuner) if it is too power hungry.
To do that I need to estimate the power drain over 24 hours (or even a week) and guestimate how much it is costing per year in electricity. A cost of around £100 per year (say) would be a strong case for a modern LCD screen. However as the whole house bill is around £1,000 a year this may be unlikely.
Amazon seems to have some meters around the £10-£20 mark.
or
so will these be reasonably accurate?
Any recommendations?
I can reuse to measure various other pieces of kit, mainly computers.
trouble wih almost all 'power meters' is that they dont measure RMS power, they tend to measure VA or some approximation to RMS that falls down badly when faced with a switched mode power supply
Unless you know how they are measuring the power, be careful.
The one I have (somewhere!) can be switched between power in W and power in VA, and gives the same result for a lightbulb (being resistive) but different results for anything with a switched mode power supply. That was a bog-standard meter from Maplin (RIP). It also had a setting that calculated total energy used (ie power integrated over time) in kWhr.
Does that realy matter that much unless you want better than 5% accuracy an d even them you might not know how they measure your power usage does your energy supplier use RMS or average how much to they account for the phase s hift caused by SMPS in computers and TVs and most devices now. I'm not sure whether or not it matters whether it's RMS or average at this scale.
I have maplin versions at home and at work, they have always been OK for su ch things and pretty much given me the info I needed.
You may be able to just look up the manual online and see what it says are the standby (hibernate) and active power consumptions.
If it is an older model then it may well default to powering the digital tuner continuously so it is worth probing the menus carefully and disabling that feature. My LCD TV went down from 20W to
Good enough to show you one or two significant figures. They are a bit flaky on low power devices and switch mode PSUs but better than nothing.
Even so you will find some devices that consume unreasonable amounts of power when they are supposed to be "off". My PC sound system consumes as much when switched off as it does when on. The on/off switch merely disconnects the inputs to the power amplifier and the on LED!
Offending items are now powered from smart sockets that switch everything off when the PC is either in standby or off.
Worth taking a quick look in Maplin to see if they have any at 30% off.
It is probably worthwhile having a whole house monitor with realtime display if you want to shave ~10% off your electricity bill. Reducing your 24/7 base load to under 100W will help save money.
I have the Owl (other brands available some free from your electricity company if you chose the right supplier and tariff).
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If the TV is really bad it will easily show up on that when you switch if on. Resolution is to nearest W but accuracy is more like +/- 10W or
5% (whichever is larger). I installed one in the Village Hall to stop people from leaving heaters on when they leave.
I have a Maplin one, I don't think it claims to measure true RMS, but it does allow toggling between W and VA, it's measuring my PC's consumption now at 35W and 58VA.
n.b. that isn't on direct mains, it's between the PC and a UPS which is running in buck mode at the moment, so not likely the sineyist of sine waves.
So how much would you say your electric company charges you to have the PC on for say 10 hours is they charge 20p per KWh ?
As I tried to imply the accuracy isnt that important and I assume whether yuo measure true RMS, RMS, average, peak, or pk-pk a TV that measures 50W or 50VA will cost you less to run than a TV measuring 80W or 80VA.
but you can elimante these problems by using teh same test equipment and variables.
It is about what mine is. Router, alarm, emergency lights, cooker and a host of gadgets in standby/sleep mode. I could get lower if I found a router that would go to sleep when there was no internet/wifi traffic.
It is worth poking around to see what else is drawing power.
UPS (probably the largest constant draw, it's warm) fridge-freezer (periodic rather than 24x7) toothbrush and clippers charging in bathroom cabinet oven and microwave flashing "12:00" router/firewall/access point DECT basestation + 2 phones in charging cradles alarm
3xPIRs for outdoor lights loft amplifier
2x TVs on standby HTPC on standby
3x USB chargers on standby DAB radio (non-SMPSU hot even when on standby) power tool charger C/H programmer UFH programmer
3x non-maintained emergency lights tablet and powered bluetooth speakers used as internet radio
If I leave a PC or laptop running overnight, can't get below 150W
They don't but then again I don't run anything in the home from my Mac or M ac mini, or at work.
That's true people do but perhaps that's not the reason, when I came in to work 2 weeks ago there had been a power failure must have been a glithic as my Mac was still up and running most PCs had all rebooted, the server runn ing the print station stopped working and on reboot I had to phone IT to ge t them to re-inialise the server. None of the studetns could enter the buil ding as the card access system had also failed, this is a know problem in t hat if it goes off and even though it comes back on again it looses permiss ions, but everything was back up and running OK within the hour.
On other occasions I've been here in front of my mac and the lights dipped , I heard a number of studetns complain that they lost work and the PC went off, but my mac stayed on, of course this is NO reason to spend more on a Mac but it;s nice to know a small glitch won't wipe out what you're doing a s it could be something important like a game. ;-D
1 month ago we had a planned shutdown it was only then I found out that we have 219 servers in the department so I now understand why quite regularly a server or two needs taking out of service to replace or upgrade.
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