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Comment by izzydata | Hacker News Reader

I bought a house a few years back and quickly realized that leaving my computers on 24/7 was terrible for my electricity bill. Now I feel bad for doing this while living with my parents all those years.

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Heh, as a kid I always wondered about this. My parents hated if someone left the lights on, but my computer has a 600w power supply... how many bulbs is that!

That 600W is the maximum power it can supply.

You'll only come close to this figure when the PC is under full load (like gaming). But while idle, a (modern) PC draws about 30-50 watts.

Unless you were cranking everything to the max 24/7 (like maxing out your GPU while reading/writing to a database while doing a bunch of floating point calcs for something?), it probably idled at around 100 watts. Not great, but not something I'd worry about.

Like running SETI@home? https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/

I certainly had that running 24/7 when I was in high school.

If it makes you feel better, those older machines probably didn't have much in the way of power management to throttle back at idle.

What?

Mine has a ‘Turbo’ button!

About 100x 6watt LED bulbs.

I now get upset when someone goes back inside to turn off a 6w LED switched bulb. It’s not worth taking up a minute of 2 people’s time.

At $6 per year, it may not be worth turning off at all. Those seconds to turn it off add up.

But good luck arguing with someone that argues this specific wastefulness should trump all other wastes.

What matter more is whether flicking the switch wears out the components more than letting it run. The replacement cost matters more than the running electrical cost.

Opening the door probably costs more in energy (from AC or Heating losses), than the savings on turning off LEDs.

Often those switches are connected to multiple led bulbs, which can be 65w for a room.

I have been telling my family that for awhile. It's going to be $3 to $6 a year if you NEVER turn off an LED bulb lamp.

If you forget, it is ok.

Though this is why I bought a 0.5w LED for a room that only the cat uses. Sure it cost $4 instead of $1.5 for a 6w, but it’ll pay for itself.

The fact that LED bulbs are that cheap nowadays is insane to me.

The $1.50 may have been subsidized, but that’s just smart. Average electricity prices may be cheap, but marginal prices might be several times.

Saving has big systemic benefits.

Agreed. I have a couple 9w LED lamps that are never switched off. It cost about $7 per lamp per year at $0.09/kwh.

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