IT all adds up

by Simon Handby in At home on 13.12.07

Ever wonder how much electricity your home appliances are actually using? We’ve been plugging a power meter into various electrical goods in a bid to find out the truth.

So far, the fridge-freezer has been the runaway ‘winner’ when it comes to kilowatt hours (kWh) used in a week, accounting for 15.27 – almost a couple of quids’ worth.

We started off by concentrating on gadgets in the home, but we also wondered whether equipment in the typical office would make domestic appliances seem thrifty. While some of us created a diversion for members of the IT department who might otherwise have asked awkward questions, a crack squad of Living correspondents hooked the power meter up to a typical PC - not the rather atypical server you see here.

Hours here at the office are 9-5.30, and you’ll be pleased to know that most of the computers get shut down at night. Even so, after a week of use, the PC had consumed 2.29kWh of electricity – a not inconsiderable amount, particularly when you consider that there are around 100 computers in the building.

Next up on our list of suspects is a typical 19-inch flatscreen monitor. Switched on it uses a modest 20 Watts of power, while encouragingly it doesn’t even register on the meter in standby mode.

After a few quick tests we were able to confirm that Blackle doesn’t make any difference to the power consumption of an LCD screen. How much electricity will a week’s Googling get through, though?

The cost of power

Incidentally, after a bit more research into the price of electricity, we’ve discovered that domestic customers generally pay a little more than the 9p per kilowatt hour we were banking on before – depending on the supplier and tariff, anywhere from 9-13p is typical. Our PC could be costing 30p a week, and the fridge nearer £2 than the £1.40 we previously thought.

IMAGE by Flickr user rudolph_schuba