Electricity consumption of audio and video gear

[Willem]

Well it is 131,4 kWh. If that is 6% of a Dutch houshold that means an annual household consumption of 2190kWh

Yes average annual household consumption is about 2400 kW, but we use natural gas to heat our homes, to heat the tap water, and to cook. For the Netherlands, the problem is that we have a lot of natural gas but its extraction has induced substantial earthquakes (in my region), so extraction has been almost completely terminated. We were also supplying a lot to Germany. We had hoped that Russian gas would serve us in the meantime, until we had built enough renewable capacity. Unfortunately that is no longer happening, so gas will have to be bought at whatever price the market dictates. Fortunately, now that storage capacity has been almost completely filled up in Europe, gas prices have been coming down again, until yesterday.
Anyway, time to get back to electricity consumption from AV gear.

 

[Waxx]

Here in Belgium it's similar with the crazy prices. I heat normally on gasoil (i'm living in a very rural region, in between villages) because no gas supply is present here. But now i do heat mainly with a woodstove. It's not ecologic, but it keeps the costs reasonable. It also helps i live in a ancient farm with very thick walls, that are isolated from the inside in the latest renovation in the 1990's.

My preamp and amps are all low power but not efficient (tubes, class A, class AB). So i keep them off totally when not listening to music. I have a few computers and a NAS, and only keep the NAS on all the time (it takes also takes a long time to start up). I don't have a tv or HT system. All my lightning is LED, my fridge is new and A+++, just like my washing machine so their power use is relative low. The biggest consumer is my electric cooking stove, and i cook daily fresh food. I will not stop doing that, i don't eat fastfood at all and i won't do that to save money. And things like uber eat or so does not exist as the distances are way to big to make it profitable.

Now i'm more looking at minimising my use of electricity, but before i did i used about 1800kW a year even if i was working from home all the time. Now i'm half time in the office or on the road for work what will reduce my electricity bill even more.

 

[Hipper]

Well it is 131,4 kWh. If that is 6% of a Dutch houshold that means an annual household consumption of 2190kWh. Interesting to see as the average electricity consumption in my country, Norway, is about 10 times higher than that.Yes we use not oil or gas, but electricity to heatour homes. And we need heating 8-9 months of the year. Not a problem as the kWh price used to be 0.03 Euro. But since our stupid politicians connected Norways electrical system to Europe we imported European marketprices also, and now we pay 0.5euro/kWh while the domestic production cost for our hydroelectric power (95% of all electric power in Norway is hydroelectic) is 0.008Euro/kWh.

Yes I am not happy to pay such prices. But 8 months of the year the energy used in Hifi or AV is not lost at all, it is just converted to heat that supplements to the needed heating of the home. Nothing is lost or wasted. If you live in a country warmer than Norway the added heat may be wasted energy that even demands more energy if you use air conditioning.


My amplifier is class A by the way

In the UK the average annual household usages are said to be:

Gas: 12,000 kWh

Electricity: 2,900 kWh

As I mentioned earlier, mine, single person in a two bed flat, is Gas: 264kWh; Electricity: 1614kWh.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-63068943

 

[Sokel]

Europe,so -apart from my DIY stuff - everything consumes under 0.5 watts in stand-by (including amps,by far the most consuming in some cases).

 

[oversky]

Power consumption (idle)
KH 120 A: 20 W
KH 120 D: 25 W

Power consumption (standby/idle)
KH 150 0 .3 W / 15 W

A good reason to upgrade.

 

[Digby]

A good reason to upgrade.

Given the price of the KH150, it'd probably take 12 years (random guess, likely not far out) to get back the difference - even if you sold the KH120s and had budgeted for leaving them on 24/7.

 

[Digby]

Also, 12 W is rather high for a router - mine typically sits at 7 W and WiFi is turned off at night, which saves around 1 W.

This really depends. If you have no need for the latest features, you can find a cheap model that will sip 3w, which does make a difference 24/7/365. However, if you want wi-fi 6 (the routers that looks like some kind of alien technology with 10 antennas) then they could be using 40-60w, over a year this could be 100+ gbp/euro difference in cost!

 

[Chrispy]

I really haven't paid much attention to what I have using what amount of electricity, standby or no. I have a couple av systems with gear on standby I suppose....lots of other stuff around the house is just actually in standby rather than completely off, too....I was thinking of this the other night when navigating the house with the various standby lights on on various gear. I don't have a measuring device, thought about getting one a few times but never did....maybe with rising prices it's time.

I had to look up my usage, and rates just now as I really didn't know the numbers.....seems I range from 850kWh to 2000kWh (low during a mild June, peak was January this year). No gas service here, appliances/water heater runs off electricity. Rates (seems to vary from USD .06 earlier in the year to .09/kWh on the latest bill (plus some flat fees), might have ignored a rate hike notice or maybe it's seasonal. Time to know the numbers by heart....seems a higher rate tier can be avoided if I keep it under 1500kWh, so need to dig into that a bit, too....

I could easily enough turn off some of the power strips, start up time isn't particularly significant for anything I can think of in the av gear.

Uh, thanks for kicking my butt into action on this

 

[Willem]

The hidden trickle of stuff that is on 24/7 is what annoys me most, if only because this is also electricity consumption during the night, when our PV panels produce nothing. It really added up in our case. Power hungry gear such as older computers that are on for many hours a day is another concern, and if such gear is older it may be economical to replace it. As for the audio gear equivalent, I think the days of big power class A amplifiers are also numbered, now that class D is such a good alternative.
Anyway, keep the numbers coming.

 

[fpitas]

As for the audio gear equivalent, I think the days of big power class A amplifiers are also numbered, now that class D is such a good alternative.
Anyway, keep the numbers coming.

Not sure there are many class As in use, percentage-wise. But yes, in my experience class D is good for driving a horn, where class A was the go-to.

 

[Waxx]

As for the audio gear equivalent, I think the days of big power class A amplifiers are also numbered, now that class D is such a good alternative.
Anyway, keep the numbers coming.

I think class A will become a niche just like tube amps. Many like the specific coloured sound just like with tube amps. I'm not changing mine, altough i also have class D amps and tubes.

But the myth they are technically the best is certainly gone, it's a niche for people who love the sound. The time that class D in general sucked is gone since quiet some time, a big part due to the work of a fellow Belgian called Bruno Putzeys... And altough i love tube and class A amps, i recognise that class D is technical better and more neutral than tubes or class A ever will be.

 

[fpitas]

I think class A will become a niche just like tube amps. Many like the specific coloured sound just like with tube amps. I'm not changing mine, altough i also have class D amps and tubes.

But the myth they are technically the best is certainly gone, it's a niche for people who love the sound. The time that class D in general sucked is gone since quiet some time, a big part due to the work of a fellow Belgian called Bruno Putzeys... And altough i love tube and class A amps, i recognise that class D is technical better and more neutral than tubes or class A ever will be.

Class A can certainly measure well and be neutral. As long as you're willing to throw power at it.

Most class A don't have the power output necessary for cone speakers at reasonable listening levels, but that's a different issue.

 

[RandomEar]

I switched from class AB to class D this year. I mainly wanted to get rid of the tweeter hiss, but the power savings were a nice bonus. I measured the idle power consumption of some devices. I tried to measure standby, but it was too low for my power meter. The following table lists the results:

Device	Idle power consumption [W]	Standby power consumption [W]
Rotel RA-12	38	<0.5
SMSL AO200	11	0.5
SMSL SH-9	9	<0.1 (?)
SMSL SU-9n	4	<0.5
Aiyima A07	7	<1

 

[PierreV]

The previous owners of my current home were running a 30.000 KWh/year lifestyle (indoor pool and similar stuff). I have now reduced it to a 5200 KWh envelope. I killed the pool, converted every light to leds, kept the air conditioning for occasional use (a few nights during the heat wave we recently had for example). I am obviously not a "communist" and while I lean "green" I am constantly reminded that the greens we have here have pushed insane but nice-sounding projects for 3 decades because those politicians can't even count and realize their plans were/are totally unrealistic. (my favorite example is a hydro-electric plant where excess nuclear power during the night is used to pump water back up: killing the nuclear plant also decreases the hydro-electric green output).

Politics aside, I find it insane that we live in a world where shops selling short-lived goods such as electronics, trash clothes remain lit throughout the night. It is energy waste for the sake of selling waste. A part of me hopes that this energy crisis will put a stop to that and most other types of mindless waste. But then, I can foot my current bill, and I fully realize many can't handle both the energy cost and the inflation on essential goods. I've read that energy availability and affordability have been the major driver of our living standards improvements in general...

Hospitals will be severely impacted which means that social security or cost of care will suffer as well. Some local bakeries are closing as they can't pay huge electricity bills and keep their prices sane. If BASF is forced to reduce its activity, as I believe it already is, it will have an impact, at least in Europe, much worse than the electronics shortage, hitting everything from drugs manufacturing to fertilizer production.

Decaying living standards are bound to create social unrest that will favor the extremes: the fully redistributive "commies" and the "pie in the sky trickle down economics " authoritarian "fascists". I can weather the storm, but can't shake the feeling the worst still is ahead of us.

 

[MCH]

. If BASF is forced to reduce its activity, as I believe it already is, it will have an impact, at least in Europe, much worse than the electronics shortage, hitting everything from drugs manufacturing to fertilizer production.

If Ludwigshafen needs to shut down (i believe the issue there is the gas to feed the crackers according to the news) the electronics shortage will feel like a joke besides, not only in europe.

 

[Willem]

I try not to think too much about what if scenarios, and leave that to others. In the meantime I personally focus on what I can do, to save tbe planet and my wallet. So I managed to reduce our annual electriciy consumption from a high 6000 kW to about 4500 kW now, which happens to more or less equal the annual output of our PV panels. Last year we improved the insulation of our house significantly, reducing our natural gas consumptipn from about 2600 m3 to about 2100. We are now waiting for an all electric heat pump to heat our home. Estimated delivery time 8-12 months.
The best thing I can do now is probably buy my wife a new computer and after that replace our two older refrigerators. What I am not yet ready for is to replace our plasma tv. The image quality is great and there is very little 4k content.

 

[Doodski]

I find it insane that we live in a world where shops selling short-lived goods such as electronics, trash clothes remain lit throughout the night. It is energy waste for the sake of selling waste.

I live in a city of ~one million and all I see at night is skyscrapers lit up like they are all working the nightshift. All the lights inside are ON. Then as you say all those advertising signs outside businesses are illuminated all night every night. I wonder if their networks and computers and are ON too. It's madness.

 

[NiagaraPete]

Sounds like a VOIP service, if you internet dies you'll have no phoneline, so make sure you have a mobile too.

Though it may be VOIP its likely digital. Our cable provider offered the same thing.

 

[NiagaraPete]

Yes average annual household consumption is about 2400 kW,

My consumption runs about 4000 kW but I have electric water heat instead of the norm in Canada which is gas.

 

[Willem]

Heating tapwater electrically will make quite a difference. We use gas. On the other hand we recently ditched the gas cooker for an elecgric induction system which we very much like. Once we no longer need gas for heating and tapwater we can therefore have the gas disconnected, saving quite a bit on fixed connection charges.