Energy prices' got me singing the blues

Post 00018 | October 3nd, 2022

My monthly electricity bill arrived today. It was about three times higher compared to what it was in January.

I knew it was going to happen, but it wasn't until I saw the bill it really dawned on me; We have a tough winter ahead of us. The rising cost is one thing, but at eventually we may reach the point where the utility company isn't able to keep up with demand and will have to cut power to sections of their grids. Should this happen, these sections will take turns blacking out for a couple of hours at the time. I'll should be fine. The worst that could happen to be is they cut power before I reach the next save point. Other people rely on electricity for their cars or medical equipment.

Because of this, I decided to give my flat a quick run over to see where all my money went. I'm using a plug-in electricity meter for my testing; They are fairly inexpensive but if you are only going to use it once, you might want to check with your local library or energy company as many of them have services in place that allows you to borrow one.

Turn off stuff when not in use.

Duh. This is without a doubt the most obvious - It just wasn't as big a concern when electricity was cheap. My big power hog is my home server. Sixteen cores processor and a big graphics card standing idly by, waiting for work. They do run some services I wouldn't want to be without, but most of these could just as easily be run on a couple of Raspberry Pi boards. I'm still not sure how I want to set this up, so for now I turn the machine off when not in use.

Go look for power hungry appliances.

May seem like a given, but it bears repeating. Modern electronics are required by law to be power efficient, but sometimes manufacturers try to get around it by offering an eco-setting that abides the law and a convenient setting you are more likely to choose as it turns on quicker. The thing is, these settings come at a cost. Remember those MPEG encoders people bought when TV stations switched to digital broadcasts? I've seen models that used over 20W during "standby". At current prices, this is more than what a Netflix subscription costs.

Other than that, it's probably mostly old stuff you want to look at. Old devices (before the turn of the millennium) were built before these energy efficiency laws were made. As a rule of thumb, if the appliance gets warm, it's wasting power. If the appliance uses a DC adapter you can replace it with something newer or, if it has a built in power supply you should pull the plug when not using it or add a switch to its power cable).

Going through my flat, I found my PlayStation 1, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, and microwave were notable offenders (other retro consoles already have already had their power supplies upgraded).

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I noticed my modem, router, switch, and access point was using about 25W combined. I don't use while I sleep or at work so it makes sense turning it off. Also, in comparison, my phone only uses 1.5W more sharing it's 4G connection. I obviously wouldn't use it for gaming or big downloads but for everyday browsing it's perfectly sufficient.

In conclusion:

My power use gets updated daily on my energy company's website. Turning off everything non-essential has cut my energy bill with 85%! Now I have to find the balance between convenience and cost. For now, I have sent for a low-power APU for my home server. I initially built it to take care of everything, including a gaming VM, but with that kind of power draw I think it makes more sense splitting it up in two; a low power server and a high power gaming PC.