Cable modem --> WRT54G Router --> [my computer + SWMBO's Macintosh + HP color laser printer + OOMA VOIP phone + Neighbor's laptop + SWMBO's netbook]

Out of all of that, only the neighbor and the netbook actually use the wireless function. I didn't know what kind of setup I would have before I moved down here, so I got the WRT54G wireless router "just in case". Wireless or not, I need the router working all the time.

It would make sense to change the wireless router for a non-wireless one and drop an ethernet cable down to the neighbor... except that the floors of this building are 16" steel-reinforced concrete and making a hole would be... difficult, and I would need at least a six-port router. Better to leave well-enough alone.

In any case, the power supply for the router is rated at .5A at 12V, so it is pulling about 3 watts (figuring the router is using about 50% of the maximum capacity of the power supply) so that works out to be maybe two KWH per month. More than I would have thought, those little 3-watt loads do add up, don't they? By contrast, my refrigerator is, by my calculation, using more than 90 times that amount. [6.0A @ 127V = 762 watts averaging 8 hours per day of run time for 30 days = 183 KWH/month.] And yes, my next large household expenditure will be for a larger but more energy-efficient refrigerator!

tanstaafl.

Not that you'd want to in your case but you can disable the radio in a WRT54G from the web interface. It doesn't completely power down the radio but it does reduce consumption quite a bit.

Thanks Doug.

I feel that the WRT54G series are excellent, power-efficient routers. With DD-WRT or Tomato firmware (on capable units) one can save an extra watt by having the wifi automatically switch itself off overnight. In your case, with a shared connection, that's probably not worthwhile feasible.

Cheers!

I'm not sure it's worth turning it off for a watt; there are likely easier kills (possibly not for you Mark, given your setup is pretty optimized).

I'm still very frustrated by gear - and this includes the WRT54's that I've owned - that use a transformer vs a DCDC for the AC supply. Even aside from the efficiency issues, you're shipping a huge lump of iron around. One netgear gbit switch I got several years ago in the UK came with TWO honking bricks, one with a UK plug and one with an EU plug - you were just meant to toss one half-kilo lump away upon opening the package. That really annoyed me....

I'm at about 10kWh/day for a (small) family of four with the associated washing/drying. We really ought to get a washing line up given the weather is very conducive to drying clothes outdoors in california

"Dark power" of the house at night is <100W, most of which is the fridge/freezer; I mapped out all the systems when I moved in but still have some unaccounted-for drains. Stuff that's on in that total includes a time capsule, docsis3.0 modem, airport extreme extender with at&t microcell plugged into it, home alarm with cell signalling (2 transformers, all sensors are wireless/battery), combination boiler, hardwired smoke detectors, TED5000 power monitor, skype cordless phone, laptops/phones on charge (though fully charged, so this is <1W each), microwave, oven, baby monitor (both ends), and irrigation timer.

This list is probably too long, but over half of that is just the fridge which we got with the house and is probably not viable to replace if you're doing it just to save energy, given how much energy making a new fridge would take...

I somehow feel cheated.

Someone needs to invent a power strip that, in addition to normal AC outlets, has a built-in switched mode power supply to provide DC power for the various devices that would otherwise use wall warts.

You can already buy "universal" AC adapters that allow you to select voltage and come with a variety of barrel connectors. No reason an amped-up (pun intended) version couldn't be incorporated in a power strip.

I think the increasing prevalence of USB-powered devices will lead to exactly the sort of universal wall warts that you're talking about. You can already get stuff like this thing. Eventually, this will only get better.

The "resting" power consumption of our house is maybe 300W, which seems way too high, but I've been focusing my efforts on getting down the costs when we're home and things are on, which has led me down the (expensive) path of LED lighting. I've been surprised at how much electrical power the gas heater (and gas clothes dryer) consume. Spinning a non-trivial sized electrical motor consumes a non-trivial amount of electricity. Funny, that.

Well, I do leave my wifi routers on all the time. But then again, we generate all our own power with solar panels, so if I don't use it up, it kinda seems wasteful

Use more power! ('til the batteries run low)

Like it or not, the modern world runs on electricity, and while minimising power usage is surely beneficial, the key issue is the method used to generate the power in the first place.

IMO there should be far greater use of renewable energy to generate power both on a large (national grid) and small (individual household) scale and far more incentives to achieve this (both financial and legislative) other than the obvious environmental incentive.

Very important to monitor both ends of a baby.

Peter

I'm not saying you're doing this, since obviously you can't go without your solar panels, but the now that more and more solar panels are getting installed on houses, there's now the perverse effect where people end up installing power hungry stuff like air conditioners into their houses, or even start to heat their houses again with electrical heaters, just because "the power is there anyway". Sounds like big NO to me, but that's just me.

Also, the creation of a solar panel blows more CO2 into the air than that panel can ever lower through its entire life cycle. For this reason I'm not that big on solar panels, which all seem to be a partially government funded (well, in Belgium they are anyway) scam to me. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the government, who offers funds for the installation of solar panels now, would start to tax them in a few years, effectively reclaiming all the funds they have granted in the first place and then some. And also what to do with all those 'used up' solar panels in 20 years from now? How to recycle those? As far as I know, nothing has ever been said about that.

When we built our house, I paid special attention into lowering energy consumption as much as possible. Not only for the environment, but also -I'll be honest here- the less energy you use, the less you pay. I reached my goal more or less with several things, but one thing in particular: insulation. I put as much of the stuff as I could inside the walls, floor and roof. I also heat up the house and my hot tapwater with a geothermal heat pump (which works excellently!). A normal power use for our house, which has about 320m² of usable space, is about 1000 KWh/month. I'm really pleased with that since the power company themselves claim that normal monthly use is about 3.500 KWh - 4.000 KWh. I probably could still improve this by using some of the Mark's tips here, and I will.

They stopped shipping transformer supplies years ago, in this country at least -- all six of my WRT54GLs have modern switching-style wall warts.


Yeah, definitely for the clothesline. Ours here is used from March/April through November normally. Saves a ton of electrical power (not feasible to install a gas dryer in our specific house -- venting issues).

I often look at the wall of switches and wallwarts here, and wonder perhaps about consolidation with a single larger supply of some kind. But then that probably wouldn't be too efficient with only two or three things running off of it at a time.

The Mythtv box does use its internal PSU in place of a number of external power bricks though. Simplifies the wiring there, too.

Cheers

Lest too many of you develop the opinion that I'm an energy conservation maniac (not a bad thing, that, but..), we do indulge in UPSs that are on 24/7 to protect critical electronics.

I imagine they don't help the bottom line for power consumption, but they do seem to have put an end to premature death syndrome for the things we plug into them.

Or maybe designs have just improved enough. Dunno. Before we started using UPSs, we did have the odd PSU and/or motherboard just "die" for no good reason, but never since.

Cheers

Hmm you could do this right now. Get a big honking AC-DC supply and put it in the basement/closet. The AC-DC supply would have to put out +5,+12 and possible +19 (that's what my Dell takes) if you wanted it to power laptops too. Run some DC wiring around the home, make custom cables with Sermos connectors for various voltages for all your appliances. Could be a fun project- not sure how much you would really save in the end though.

Hmmm.. that makes me feel better about my electrical usage.

My most recent electric bill (see attached) showed me using 559 KWH.

Now, there are a few things to take into consideration.

First of all, the bill is bi-monthly. It shows consumption from October 10 through December 10, 2010, at an average consumption of 9.47 KWH per day.

Second, my house is smaller than yours (about 160 M^2 [OK, Archeon, how did you get that superscript in your post? ] including the downstairs neighbor, but that really isn't much of a factor because my climate is so temperate that I literally have no way of heating or cooling my house. Nor do I need any. House size does not affect my consumption.

Third, there are only two sources of significant power consumption: my refrigerator, and my computer. I calculate that my refrigerator is consuming 70% of all the electricity I use. (My stove and my hot water heater are gas-fired.)

Fourth, there are only three of us living here, and SWMBO probably spends more time away from the house than in it, other than to sleep. And even when we're at home, it is literally a glass house (outside walls are glass floor to ceiling!) and so much light pours in that artificial lighting just isn't required. In the 14 months we've been here I have yet to replace a light bulb.

Fifth, my rate per KWH is so high (with taxes and monthly connection fee, around $.30 USD per KWH) that I pay pretty close attention to my usage. It is frightening to see an electric bill for $2094.20 before realizing that it is in pesos, not dollars, and that it is really $167 USD and that it is for TWO months, and that my downstairs neighbor pays a third of it. But still, $57 per month for pretty minimal usage stings a little bit.

Sixth, my March-April bill from 2010 was an anomaly. I can only think of two possibilities. It is not impossible (I have heard rumors...) that CFE "phreaked" the meter, adding an additional 500 KWH to it (and no, I don't mean "mis-read" the meter, that would have corrected itself on the following bill!), or somehow the construction site next door tapped into my power.

But, if you are operating at less than one third of the average consumption for your area, and I am operating at one quarter of what you are using (albeit smaller house, fewer people, more temperate climate, etc.) I guess I'm doing OK.

tanstaafl.

I'm currently just using the stock Verizon FiOS modem/router, which has no such options.

Simple. The square meter sign comes standard on Belgian keyboards.


Gee, now I'm feeling bad again. But hey, on the other hand, that 1000 KWh/month is now: mid-winter, with temperatures as low as -10 degrees C. That electrical usage should easily get halved in summer when there is no need to have the heater on.

The price you're paying for electricity doesn't seem all that steep to me. I'm currently paying about 120 euro/month. Most people here are paying up to 200 euro/month or more (and, we've built a larger than standard house, I have to be honest about that as well - most houses here are between 100m²-200m²). It's because we were able to build such an eh... larger house I've searched for a possibility to get this house heated without getting choked by the electrical bill in the process. The extra insulation and geothermal heat pump did the trick. And I'm very happy when I say this because this heat pump was kind of a step in the dark. I know of nobody who uses such a system and it really isn't very common here. But it turned out quite nicely.

You can also type in "&sup2;" → "²"

You can also superscript or subscript text using [sup] and [sub] tags.

My monthly bill isn't too bad, but only because I use very little.

At 120 euros for 1,000 KWH, you're paying €.12/KWH. [That's 12/100ths of a euro per KWH, the decimal point is hard to see.] I'm paying €.23/KWH, almost exactly double the cost per KWH that you are paying. If I used 1,000 KWH/month, my bill would come to €230/month, or about $315 USD.

My overall electricity expense is reasonable, but my unit cost per KWH is pretty steep.

tanstaafl.

I can't seem to make that work. Can you be more specific?

tanstaafl.

Sure, just do this.

How about ²22222²?


is
This is superscript

Same for sub for subscript

That's not really doing to work so well due to the impedance of the cabling. The good thing about high voltage is that your resistive losses are much less as the currents are lower (V=IR, after all). That'll also mean that your 5v in the basement might end up being 4.5v or less depending on both the cabling and what was pulling current from it.

Also, the little power bricks are actually pretty efficient - usually at least in the same ballpark as a honking PC supply. For example, I think the little iPhone chargers are 85%+ efficient, and a pretty near zero quiescent current when unloaded.

Right. Despite the thread context, I was more hoping for it to get rid of the large plugs. Probably less of an issue in the UK, where regular plugs dwarf the newer regulated supplies.

If it comes with a big linear regulator power supply then I usually replace it with a small SMPS unless its got a really bizarre output voltage.

The spare SMPS units I've got are all fairly small and the ones I order for special voltages aren't expensive either so its not a big deal to replace for me.

This thread comes at the right time for me. I just received my last, and worst ever, electric bill: 1232 kWh from Nov 5th to Jan 5th. It is slightly more than 600 kWh/month, 20kWh/day. € 318 overall.

That's bad.

Yikes! That's even higher per kWh than I'm paying, at €.26. That would come to $.35/kWh in US dollars.

Is anybody here paying a higher rate than that?

I stand corrected on my previous posts: Kilowatt Hours should be abbreviated kWh, not KWH or kwh, in tribute to James Watt of course.

tanstaafl.

$.36/kWh for the first 51 kWh each month, $.16/kWh for the rest

It is. Here electric power is generally extremely expensive. This happened since nuclear plants were dismissed in the entire contry and we started to buy electricity from nuclear plants in France, just cross the border.