boxst

Hello

I leave my computer on all the time (not the monitor), and just wondered how much this costs per year?

My maths are not up to working out power consumption * time * cost

Steve.

mark_h

For every 100W, it'll cost 1KWh (say about 10p) every 10 hours, so 24p a day (or a bit less if you have economy7). The PSU in your PC may be rated at 300W, but the power consumption is likely to be somewhere in the 100-200W range at a guess.

boxst

Hello

Thanks for your reply.

So ...

-=-=
Assuming 300W, and £0.10 per KWH:

Daily Use: 300 * (0.10/10) = £0.72

Yearly: (0.72 * 365) = £262.80
-=-=

Wow, that's alot.

Steve.

Gordo

bollox - something wrong with the maths there me thinks! On that basis I'd have an electricity bill of about £5,000 a year for all the ****e in our house!

boxst

Hello

Have a look here: http://www.smud.org/info/appliance_e...usage.html#kWh, that seems to imply that my calculation is correct:

((300 * 24 / 1000) * 0.10) * 365) = £262.80 .

Shocking.

Steve.

mark_h

Don't forget that 300W will mostly come out as heat, so that's 300W less heating you'll need to keep the room warm in the winter.

Beauregard

I have 1 PC + a Freeview box + D-Link router that all run 24*7. The Ammeter that I have pluged in shows 0.5 Amps. So that is 240 * 0.5 = 120W. 1Kwh costs 6p. 120w takes 8.3 hours to use 1Kw. So This costs me 18 pence per day.

Beauregard

Or about £65 per year. But tonight with 5 machines running and 3 screens I am using nearly 2 Amps. Geek mode over.

MattN

yeah but elecricity only costs about 5-6p/KW so you could almost halve your figures

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

As an aside: Plugging in an ammeter doesn't actually tell you how much power is being used, thanks to a property called the 'power factor' of your equipment. Getting a true measure of the power that's consumed by a piece of mains equipment is difficult and requires expensive, specialised gear.

Your household electricity meter, however, isn't terribly sophisticated, and will make much the same underestimate of the power used by your PC as the ammeter will. It's one of those rare cases when you actually do get something for nothing!

Tip: if you could plug a big enough capacitor across your household mains supply, you'd get cheap electricity until they came to arrest you...

A.