Arcoarena

I got one of those plug-in power meters from B&Q (they were doing a 10% off if you spend over £50, I had £45 worth of stuff in my basket and this thing cost £5)

I’ve been slowly going round the living room trying to work out where I should worry about power draw from stuff and where I shouldn’t. Here’s the results of a slightly unscientific experiment. Where I’ve quoted a range of figures it’s to show the variation

Amongst this data there are a few surprises. Why does the TV draw 9.6W in standby, what’s it doing? I’m pleasantly surprised that the PVR draws less than 10W given that it still has to decode TV signals in standby. Interestingly the combined power of the PVR and the aerial amplifier was less than the power of just the PVR. I’m assuming that the PVR’s internal amplifier is less efficient that the separate one.

Finally, I haven’t put this in the table but…. I was surprised how much the router was taking, I would have expected it to be less than 10W, in doing some of the testing I turned the router off, the power meter read 14W. Pulling the power cable out of the back of the router didn’t decrease this value. So just the PSU for the router (a standard 12V power brick) draws 14W even when it’s supplying no current. I find that quite shocking given that I’ve been involved with designs to run Linux on a PowerPC with DDR, memory etc. in less than 5W