tmbrown97
Senior Member
So earlier today in the chat, the topic came up of how much power our switches consume. We go into this thinking that by using these switches, the lights will be off more, and the dimmer will save us money, etc. I think people forget that having this little device sitting there listening on the powerline and that cool looking colored LED light come at a cost! I knew it used something, but this piqued my curiosity.
So - I rigged up a few of them so I could plug them into the Kill-A-Watt. Knowing that just one would probably register too low, I figured I'd get a more accurate reading if I hooked 5 up then did the math.
Here's the rig - I took 5 US1140's - 4 brand new, one a used one - and I taped them together with electrical tape side-by-side (each one individually to keep it tight and secure). I found an old PC power cord (the standard C13 power cord) to sacrifice - cut the end off and hooked up the switches to hot, neutral, ground - and taped off all the load and remote wires - and hooked it up in the kitchen to a GFCI-protected outlet just for extra safe good-measure.
So - some fun stats:
My power gets into the high tier (I think I'd end up there even if I unscrewed every lightbulb in the house and turned off my AC - the limit is low!) - so basically anything new added to my power bill will be at the high rate - which is $.409/kWh - an absolutely insane price to pay for power... the highest it could go in my last neighborhood was $.13
So - I plugged that into the Kill-A-Watt and let it run for a bit - and checked out the cost - it's at about $10.72 to run 5 switches for a year. I'm installing about 50-60 switches, so times that by 10 - I'll be looking at $107/year, or an extra $8.92/month just to have these switches.
The good thing though is that I use the switches to set all the lights to only turn on to 80%, and keep them dimmed quite often now, so hopefully that'll off-set any costs (means I'm not saving as much as originally hoped tho!).
I'm very new to power monitoring and caring (funny how a $700 electric bill will do that to you!) - but I'll have this rig set up until Saturday if you guys want me to test any other scenarios or get any other types of readings. I have the Kill-A-Watt-Ez (I don't know what the difference is).
So - I rigged up a few of them so I could plug them into the Kill-A-Watt. Knowing that just one would probably register too low, I figured I'd get a more accurate reading if I hooked 5 up then did the math.
Here's the rig - I took 5 US1140's - 4 brand new, one a used one - and I taped them together with electrical tape side-by-side (each one individually to keep it tight and secure). I found an old PC power cord (the standard C13 power cord) to sacrifice - cut the end off and hooked up the switches to hot, neutral, ground - and taped off all the load and remote wires - and hooked it up in the kitchen to a GFCI-protected outlet just for extra safe good-measure.
So - some fun stats:
- Power Factor = 0.7
- Combined (5 US1140's) consume 3 watts; almost 4 (it jumps up when you play with the switches)
- The power consumed jumps quite a bit when you're interacting with the switches (expected)
- The amps consumed for all 5 sat around .4
- I threw all 5 into setup mode and added them fresh to my network - in the process, especially during the writes, the amps jumped all over the place, including up to a little over 1 full amp.
- Off or On didn't seem to matter, nor did color of the lights - it just jumped after being switched (most likely when transmitting status).
My power gets into the high tier (I think I'd end up there even if I unscrewed every lightbulb in the house and turned off my AC - the limit is low!) - so basically anything new added to my power bill will be at the high rate - which is $.409/kWh - an absolutely insane price to pay for power... the highest it could go in my last neighborhood was $.13
So - I plugged that into the Kill-A-Watt and let it run for a bit - and checked out the cost - it's at about $10.72 to run 5 switches for a year. I'm installing about 50-60 switches, so times that by 10 - I'll be looking at $107/year, or an extra $8.92/month just to have these switches.
The good thing though is that I use the switches to set all the lights to only turn on to 80%, and keep them dimmed quite often now, so hopefully that'll off-set any costs (means I'm not saving as much as originally hoped tho!).
I'm very new to power monitoring and caring (funny how a $700 electric bill will do that to you!) - but I'll have this rig set up until Saturday if you guys want me to test any other scenarios or get any other types of readings. I have the Kill-A-Watt-Ez (I don't know what the difference is).