Power Consumption idle

Thanks for the answers, I thought the real answer would lie in the "Kill a Watt", I'm just a major cheapo. I guess I don't really want to know how much my large salt water fish tank is using, anybody want to buy a large tank?

My rate is .0814 average, and every month I end up with a $250.00 electric bill. For a single guy this just seems high. I won't bore you all with my bills here.....

Thanks
Marty

That bill doesn't make sense. Let's assume that you're using a 15A circuit, so the breaker would fire if the current draw were significantly more than 15A for any reasonable period of time. That means your system draws less than 15A.

Let's further assume that for some (odd) reason your system is drawing 10A (quite a bit), and that it does this 24/7.

At 120V, (10 A)(120 V) = 1200W
(1200 W) (24 hrs/day) = 28.8 kWh / day
(28.8 kWh / day)(30 days/ month)($0.0814 / kWh) = $70.33

This should be an overestimation of what you would expect to pay monthly for the stereo system, since a 10 ampere draw is a lot for most systems.

A $250/month bill doesn't make sense. But then again, I get $50 bills when I am away from home for the entire month, and the only thing plugged is in the refrigerator. I don't trust my apartment building's meters.

I would definitely investigate this further.

Michael

No surprise to me in that situation...

7ch amp just speaks for itself: "I can run very very hot!"

Despite the famed audiophile suggestions having amp on 24/7 I found on number of SS amps(especially multichamps that have a limited heat-sink possibilities) lack of heat-sink surface v.s. power and so lack of active output elements as well that work in peak region of operation.

Such amps constantly increase its heat with large possibility to change offset if not to the point of burning than to the substatial increase of idling power consumption.

You can acquire suggested by Sean Kill-A-Watt and measure every day of constant idling and if you will read differences, than for the sake of your electric bills and speaker/amp safety turn them off when they're not in your direct attention.

As to the monoblocks, despite a large possibility of being quite different on characteristics they're less likely to be affected by heat v.s. integrated amps v.s. multi-channel amps v.s. receivers and v.s. ordinary stereo amps.

In my case as Sean pointed out, when I open my VTLs monos to fix the first time I was surprised that some of the elements were mounted differently probably due to the different techs who were building these amps. I can only assume what kind of "matching" this pair of monos underwent....

Refrigerators are the single largest electrical consumer in the house. You might want to check the efficiency of your current model. It might have a leak or somehting. Your stereo should not be the culprit of your high bill. I had a Pass Aleph class A amp running at 200 watts when on and it did not have an impact on our bill. You might check to see what else is using juice from your panel, or perhaps a neighbor is sharing your line somehow, or the meter reader is making a mistake. We have an old Craftsman home, I work at home all day, I use the stereo constantly, and we live in California with high electricity prices and our bill is still only $60-70/month. Our gas bill is another issue, though (leaky old home)!

I know I have a few high usage items, fish tank for example. The pumps are ~450watts 24/7, lights 360watts 12h/day, ect.. My guess is ~75.00 month.(ouch)

Everything in the house is electric so, no gas bill at least. Although the dryer, hot water/heating is all in one.

The fridge/dryer are all new/one year old, I would assume the ratings are better than most.

A few computers on 24/7, have since way upped the power savings features, although the monitors were always set to turn off after a few minutes.

I was goofing around with a Monster Cable PC awhile back and the most I could get the system to draw was ~6 amps without killing the neighbors. I am only using 5 of the 7 channels for what difference that would make. I have two subs but they switch into standby mode when not in use, I guess I might want to find out what exactly this means(HSU VTF-3's).

Well I committed a cardinal sin and hooked up the line voltage switch to shut the amp off when not is use. I'll see if this helps. At least it will not be heating up the whole house this summer...

Thanks all,

Marty