@grim_reaper I have along time interest in power use and wonder if you actually measured your use and wife's use? [I have no interest in who uses what just reality of use] - things ON 24/7 seem to add up much more than I used to think - and with new wall wart standards and such it's evident the national energy folks also think a watt is worth watching...
Premelec (and other interested members - who all seem to be American - a pattern??)
I too have an interest in power use, but it's one of those things that comes and goes (mainly comes once a year when I get a new bill from the electricity supplier and the direct debit's gone up!). I have a 'Watt Watcher' with a USB output that the server* logs, but the data has just been piling up for years and I haven't really analysed it. It's on the main incoming supply to the house, so it's a total usage, which I find isn't that helpful.
While I'm sitting at my desk, 'AXEing or Pi'ing, I do notice the watt meter jump to silly numbers when the washing machine or tumble dryer are being used by the wife. That's what got me into this whole power usage thing in the first place. And now you've got my thinking that my original thoughts on the matter are probably a bit off! I guess what you're saying is that I have to weigh up the cost of several KW for an hour vs. several hundred W all day long.
The reason I usually lose the interest in this topic after a few days is that I have a comprehensive spreadsheet of all the bulbs in the house (sad, I know!) - or to be more precise, everything on the lighting circuits. When I started replacing the old filaments with LED bulbs, the amount of power used in total (pretty basic calculation, total wattage if everything was on 24/7) started dropping, and is now about 5% of what it used to be! When we moved into the house, there were two large floodlights over the garden at 50W each, the hallway lights were 100W bulbs... etc. Now I've replaced replaced pretty much everything with 3W to 5W LEDs, the usage is much lower. Of course, the flip-side to that is I've probably spent a fortune on bulbs (which I don't even want to attempt to add up...), never mind my time rewiring circuits, changing light switches, drilling holes in ceilings for downlighters, wiring them in... blah blah.
With regard to wall warts, I've ditched most of those in favour of switch-mode supplies. Of course, as mentioned before, the main problem is convincing the wife (and three kids) to not plug wall warts in and leave them on all the time and not to wash every item of clothing they own 4 times a week
. I think the wife is allergic to the sunshine too, because the washing line hasn't been out at all this year
I apologise for the long winded reply... boredom at work does strange things.
* It's one server, in a small box, don't know the PSU rating off the top of my head. The server itself runs a web site for me to get into my various devices when I'm out and family notices, etc., and there are two virtual servers running on top of the main OS. The virtuals only really get used when I'm debugging network-based software or working from home for more than a day or two.
