Articles - How much does it cost to run your electrical items: you may be shocked

[HEXUS]

How about over £200 for a TV if left on 24/7?

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[Lyall3s1]

Really good article. I'm amazed how much it costs to run a high end computer 24/7 .

[HSK]

damn, i'm not surprised now actually, we recently got a gas and electric bill, i think it was around 600 quid :-| I think we're going to buy the eco eye.

[digit]

Good article, I'll look at investing in an eco eye to show my parents how much electricity is wasted around the house leaving the lights on upstairs etc. Could be handy for university as well

[kanneii]

damnn! that seriously is too much. but mine is pretty much stable, thank god. maybe im mostly at work and living alone.?

[99Flake]

Really good article, I would be really interested to know what it costs to play my xbox 360, say per half hour, as in order to do that I have to have the TV (old CRT 28" jobby) and my seperates surround system on (3 amps running).

Thing is it is not something that I could 'save' money on as in order to use it they have to be on, there is no standby etc so I would never recoup the cost of an eco-eye, they would just be a purchase for intrigues sake!

[HSK]

I put in a order for eco-eye and a plug meter for individual appliances, going to see if we can get the usage and cost down.

[staffsMike]

Well I use an xps M1330 as my main system so I was happy to see that on the list being nice and cheap to run I also run my 20" monitor though so goes up by about double lol

[Hicks12]

Well i use my system about 9 hours a day but it runs about 3 hours load and 4hours idle(basic web browsing). My system isnt a energy hog either with just an e8400+ 9800GTX, from reviews it seems better performing systems(with 9800GTx) consumed about 100w idle and 210w load so i worked out that it costs me about £50 a year for it running at a cost of 10p per KWh which i believe is the correct price for me as we get charged less the more we use .
Will be grabbing one of those power monitors though when they are around a 5er because £10 is alot when i can do it in my head xD. I think sky and virgin boxes are the killers as THEY force you to keep them on standby(unless you unplug/switch off at mains) as the button puts them on standby which is stupid.

I didnt know brightness affected power usage so much on tv's, i have a 22" LG tv which is only 50/100 as standard(better than sony aye ).

Cheers for the thread, good stuff.

[NightOwl]

I'm going to look into the brightness setting for my LCD TV ~ I never thought of that so thanks for the heads up!

One small thing I do regularly is to unplug any charging equipment that's not actively being used e.g. my AA battery charger, sat nav and mobile phone chargers, I've read that these can still consume energy just sitting there and not doing anything. It might just be a few ££s a year but when you have lots of small things like this it soon adds up!

[Jay]

I am a low end user. Most of my time is on a laptop and I work over 40 hours a week, my g/f also works 40 hour a week so we are only really watching TV etc for a few hours a week. I play on my gaming PC once a week and have a Mini ITX atom based server running for 16 hours a day (HDDs spin down after 20 mins and the boot drive is a CF card.)

I go through about £10 a week or £520 a year.

[Tidus]

The back of my TV reads 569W, that hurts.

[sirbendy]

well worth getting a meter - I do it with everything I buy, so I know the running costs.

My AV stack is old tech..21" CRT, digibox, Technika DVD player, Wii..on 2 hours or so a day, uses a total of 110watts maximum. All on multiways, so I turn it off when not in use - even if you "turn off" an LCD/Video/TV, it's not necessarily off..I've got Dell TFTs that still eat 9 watts of power when turned off at the front. Awful.

Looked at my A rated fridge and freezer - together, they'll cost about £45/year to run according to the meter over 24 hours. Not bad. My PC is built using the AMD64 X2 EE chip etc, with a 19" TFT - it's not a power hog, but again it goes off at the mains when not in use. Soft-off/ATX off is useless.

I could recommend an intelliplug or one of the clones that are out there - they seem to work quite well and are more automatic than switching it off by hand.

With the TV, dual core PC in use nightly, missus dualcore laptop in use the same etc, turning it all off when not in use, my power bill is £5 a week.. Can't beat that with a stick.

Even got my router on a cheap timeswitch - only on when we're home. Better for security too!

[Ciber]

I worked out my Humax PVR uses much more electricity per day for the time I'm not using it (on standby all day) than when I am (a few hours watching TV per week). It is now on a simple plug in timer so it's only on standby in the evening.

[Tarinder]

The back of my TV reads 569W, that hurts.

Ouch! Which model is that?

[cheesemp]

Personally I just learnt to unplug/switch off my appliances after use. Its not too hard to get into the habit and you can then save £30 on one of units that does it for you.