[dba-Tech] Power Consumption

Rocky,
PC power supplies are actually rated at higher consumption than they use. I
did some research on this earlier in the year unfortunately I didn't record
where I got the information. (I remember that some of its was googled
though). Also if you have your PC power consumption settings to the factory
defaults it is going conserve quite a bit of power after you don't use use
it for awhile- like 70% I think. (Control Panel Power Options - You can get
there via the Energy Star settings on your display settings too).

Many printers, scanners, etc have "standby or sleep" modes built into them
and some you can't shut the power off with "pulling the plug". I can hear my
laserjet kicking down to standby when it does so (a couple of minutes after
the last print job).

I looked into the little transformer "power packs" that seem to come with
everything these days and they are not as efficient as you might think. Most
of them draw power whether its needed or not, albeit not much power.

You might try energystar.gov as a starting point. I would imagine you could
spend all day on this googling up info on this topic.

HTH
John B.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
> [mailto:dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com]On Behalf Of Rocky Smolin
> - Beach Access Software
> Sent: Friday, November 07, 2003 9:32 AM
> To: dba-tech
> Subject: [dba-Tech] Power Consumption
>
>
> I'm trying to teach the kids a little about electricity
> conservation - see if we can knock down that electric bill a bit
> (we pay about $.10 per kwh).  I'm going to have them calculate
> how much it costs to leave various things on per hour.
>
> So the question is, if a computer has a 300 watt power supply, is
> it drawing 300 watts all the time?  Does it draw more when it's
> computing than when it's idling?  What's a good way for them to
> estimate how much a computer uses if they leave it on overnight?
> Just the computer, not the monitor.
>
> Come to think of it, I leave my laser printer on all the time
> although it has a sleep mode and has to do a warm up if it hasn't
> printed anything for a while.  Also leave the speakers on - they
> use one of those little transformers that plugs directly into an
> outlet.  I suppose they draw minute amounts of power all the time
> although I never considered them to be major power users.
>
> TIA
>
> Rocky
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