BasicDog

Have you ever wondered how much electricity the electrical appliances around your house use, we have a number on the back of each appliance but do we actually know how much they are using?

After building my new Home Theatre PC I found myself wondering how much electricity it is using compared to my gaming system, and this lead me to buying a Power meter from my local Maplin shop. The power meter is a very simple device, you plug it into a socket in your house and then put the plug of the hardware you are testing into it and watch the little LCD screen amaze you. The LCD screen can display many different units, including Amps, Volts, Watts and Kilowatt Hours, and since I am used to PC components and appliances such as microwaves being referred to using Watts, I used this as my benchmark unit.

I had initially only planned on using the power meter to see the difference between my PCs, though after 5 minutes I found myself testing every power socket that I saw. Like a crazy obsessed hunchback I prowled the house hunting for my next power meter fix, this was only made worse as I was continuously surprised by more electrical appliance readings. Before long I had run out of things to test which was lucky as I had become dehydrated and showing minor symptoms of malnutrition by the time I was finished at 4am.

I am not sure where to start with describing the power usage of everything, so I think a list would be a good start.

Interestingly, the household appliances such as the kettle and microwave use far more energy than the more entertainment orientated appliances such as the PCs and HiFi (HDTV excluded)

I was astounded by how little the HiFi, freeview and routers use as these tend to be the items left on constantly or by accident. On the other hand the kettle and Microwave use a massive amount of power and as a tea addict I think this could be an issue.

On the computing side I was happy to see that the media PC uses far less than the gaming system, and even happier at the amount my laptop uses. For an average you can add a few watts to the idle reading as most PCs spend 90% of their time idle.

As a PC builder and always being advised to put 400w+ power supplies in my systems I was amazed to see how little even my fastest machine uses. I most definitely wasn't expecting my TV to use twice as much as my PC when it is Idle, and will be ensuring it is only on when needed as I believe this is my number one power hungry appliance.

Conclusion
This purchase has been one of the most thought provoking in a long time, especially interesting now that fuel bills are set to rocket soon. I hope that it has made you think about your own power usage, and if you are anything like me, you will no doubt spend the money saved on bills on more power consuming gadgets...