How Much Are Our Consoles Costing Us??
51With energy costs skyrocketing, we need to do all we can in order to save on our energy bills. So I took it upon myself to go through all of my consoles and see what savings can be made; by changing standby options, turning them off at the wall, and even switching to different systems!
So really, the reason why I'm doing this is to see how much money we - as videogame collectors - could potentially save on our electricity bills by being a little more aware of how much energy our consoles are sucking up! How much of a difference is it actually gonna make, and ultimately is it worth doing on a console-by-console basis?
If you've got only one or two of these consoles, chances are you probably won't see that much of a difference on your bills but, given that I've got quite a few, a little bit of power management could go a long way!
And who knows? You may well save yourself a few pennies by taking action on what we find in this series!
--- How I'm working it out ---
For each of the consoles that're plugged into the mains, I measured each of them using a Power Meter for at least one hour at a time in each of their power states: be that switched on, switched off, or in various different standby states they may have. This gave me a clear kiloWatt Hour reading that we can use to calculate the costs. This makes things very easy to work out seeing as we're charged for electricity per kiloWatt hour.
Calculation:
kWh * cost per kWh = total cost per hour
* 24 = total cost per day
* 365 = total cost per year
/ 12 = total cost per month
For any USB powered consoles, I used a Voltage Current Detector to measure their watt and amp usage. This was then converted into kiloWatts per hour, and we can use that to work out how much they cost - running and in standby! I did it this way because all my USB powered consoles are using USB ports built-in to my plug extensions. USB plug adapters take up a valuable plug socket, and they may introduce their own power draw (though admittedly, so might the built-in USB ports).
Calculation:
((volts * amps) / 1000) * cost per kWh = total cost per hour
* 24 = total cost per day
* 365 = total cost per year
/ 12 = total cost per month
If you're checking your own consoles, your results might vary. This video is intended to be a guide, based off my own observations. The costs calculated are for just the consoles themselves. It doesn't include any additional draw from other devices, such as televisions, sound systems, power extensions, etc.
00:00 Intro
01:06 Explanation
01:54 Atari VCS (aka 2600) [CX-2600 U]
04:02 NES [NESE-001 (AUS)]
05:03 SNES [SNSP-001A (UKV)]
06:01 Mega Drive 2 (aka Genesis) [MK-1631-50]
07:20 Saturn [MK-80200-50]
08:29 PlayStation [SCPH-5552]
09:44 Nintendo 64 [NUS-001 (EUR)]
11:10 Micro-consoles
13:27 Conclusion
14:16 Outro
Channel music obtained from FreeMusicArchive.org
Credit :: Trash80 :: https://trash80.com/
Other music credit:
Marc Torch :: Messenger in Limbo :: courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
Jules Gaia :: Doo Dat Wah :: courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
William Benckert :: Bozz :: courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
Super Mario Bros 3 :: Theme 2
StarWing/StarFox :: Corneria Theme
Sega Rally :: Getting Muddy
Ridge Racer Type 4 :: Pearl Blue Soul
--- MY OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA GUBBINS ---
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