Power Consumption idle

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

Leave it on and pay the bill...you're an audiophool!!

Kind of a coincidence here given this thread, but I've been having problems at my shop with the voltage dropping. I recently noticed some of my test equipment going out of calibration or "lock" and started checking into what was going on. As it turns out, the voltage is dropping between 6 - 12 volts at random points during the day. While i thought it was more than a coincidence, a new business went in locally that pulls GOBS of power on a cyclical basis. I went down and talked to one of the guys working there and i was told that they are pulling appr 375 amps on an as needed basis. As such, i made them aware of the problems that i was having and one of the guys started looking things over. When their system fired up, the line voltage was sagging anywhere from 6 to 12 volts. Hmmm... Those are the exact same figures that i had come up with too.

I had already had our local utility provider out to check things over, but they couldn't find any problems. I surmised that this was due to the power dropping at random i.e. it is not a constant problem. As such, i guess i'll have to get them back out there and possibly change the transformer. The tech that had looked at it told me that it was VERY old and was what was feeding the whole grid in our area. As far as i know, i think that this transformer also feeds a portion of local residences within the area too. I have to wonder what it's doing to them ???

As a side note, a 375 amp draw is equivalent to appr 44 KW's of power. While i don't know the going rate for electricity in terms of KW per Hour around here, we assumed it was less then $0.10 per KW. At that rate, it costs that business $4.40 per hour for electricity when all of their equipment is running full tilt. As such, i thought that was pretty reasonable given the amount of power being consumed. Sean
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Buy a "Kill a Watt" P3 volt/amp/watt digital meter on Ebay, <$50.00 USD.
Cheap and lots of fun. About the only inexpensive way to actually check current draw from your audio/videa gear a idle, full power, and anything in between. What is the vampire current draw of your power supply? Why are you using 10ga mains for an amp that draws 200 watts?

Also great to see line voltage in real time. See it slump, see it spike!

I am only a pleased owner of a Kill a Watt. Not involved in the company or have one for sale.