Dell power consumption

Question

Hello All   i've been looking at energy consumption (and how to effectively reduce it) in my own office and recently purchased an energy meter which i can plug equipment into. This meter displays the current power consumption in Watts and an accumulated energy consumption in kWh depending upon how long i have left it in.   I was particularly interested in testing the savings that could be made by persuading my colleagues to switch off their processers and monitors at the end of the day. However, i have found that both the processer and monitor seem to use more power than i was expecting when powered down. For example, an optiplex 620 machine with a 1907FPt monitor still use about 30W and 16W respectively when i shut down. I was expecting the 'sleep' or 'off' power consumption to be either zero or <2W as is suggested by the dell environmental data sheets shown here   http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/corp/environment/en/prod_datasheets?c=us&l=en&s=corp   Has anybody else found this? can anybody give me an explanation as to why this difference occurs? I've been telling my colleagues to turn their monitors off instead of leaving them on standby but it appears this makes no difference in energy consumption terms! seems the only way to stop them drawing power when not being used is to actually unplug them and this is not a realistic solution!   Thanks   Mike

x_lab rat · Answer

That's odd. 30W equals 4 fullsize incandescent xmas tree lights, and you know those are uncomfortably hot to touch. Every Watt that goes into the box must come out as heat. When the computer is off, you won't find any sources of heat inside anywhere near four 7W lamps.

Simple meters are most inaccurate at the bottom of their range. That would be my first guess as to why the reading does not match expectations. You could plug a known load--a 7W nightlight--into the meter and see if it actually reads 7W.

Message Edited by x_lab rat on 01-02-2008 10:20 AM

michael08 · Answer

yes- that seems to be right. the meter works does not have a fine enough current or power factor range so these are rounded to a higher number meaning they cannot see the lower consumption when in sleep mode or 'off'.   have used a more expensive meter and this basically matches the figures on the Dell site more closely.   Mike

hrova · Answer

Can I ask what brand of meters you were using?

I have seen ads for a product call Kill A Watt lately, which is a meter of sorts. It is intriguing, but I wonder if it is the one that you used that did not read low ends well.

x_lab rat · Answer

Consumer Wattmeters are intended for things like refrigerators, not for measuring miniscule consumption of a computer that is turned off.

michael08 · Answer

The meter is a Brennenstuhl.

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Dell power consumption

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