I’m just thinking, how much electricity does a medium RGB setup use? I don’t mean a system full with everything RGB but a system with about 50% of available RGB parts.
I ask this for two reasons:-1:
Maybe a youtube video could be made??
Thanks for replies
Charles
Very very little
you have no idea how little
It’s relatively simple to run basic calculations. 12v 5a power supplies are usually bundled with 2020 RGB LED strips. Assuming a purely resistive load, that’s 60w. 60watts/hour, or 0.06kW/h.
Average US household price for electricity is 12 cents/kWh. So:
$0.12 * 0.06 = $0.0072, the cost to run at least a good 10 feet of RGB LEDs or more per hour.
How many hours? We could go insane. 6 hours a day every day of the year.
6 * 365 = 2,190 hours.
2,190hrs *$ 0.0072 = $15.77. For running a full-length RGB strip at a power supply’s maximum load 6 hours a day.
RGB components have way less LEDs and are nowhere near as bright since they don’t need to be. The difference is negligible.
I wasn’t thinking RGB strips, i more thinking RGB ram, RGB Fans, RGB motherboard. The things that we all have a choice on picking without going into PC modding area.
Still an absolutely minimal amount of power
The short answer is as mentioned above; Very little power is used. I run enough lights to illuminate my two room shed off of a solar panel 24/7, and even on the shortest day of the year I never have a problem with power. This is using a 145 watt panel, 2 x 50AH batteries, and a garbage $25 charge controller. I still have enough to charge my laptop, phone, other tiny devices, and can still run a drill or small (~20 watt) computer as needed.
With RGB LEDs, there are actually 3 LEDs in one. There is generally a common cathode with 3 anodes, each creating one of the colors. My understanding is that red, being the longer wavelength (less fluctuations per second), requires less energy than short wavelength blue light. If you were after very precise measurements in microamps, then this would be something to take into account. Running all 3 at max power to create white light would draw the most current, while running red at a dim setting would require the least energy short of being turned off.
Many machines today are already very efficient, although sometimes sacrificing longevity. One point I heard someone make recently was about old appliances and specifically refrigerators. Many of them had much thicker insulation, and could last decades before needing to be refurbished. There are a lot of them still out there getting retrofitted with new compressors and refrigerants. By making machines that last only a fraction of the life they used to, we have transferred energy. Instead of burning more energy in your home, but only buying one or two machines in your lifetime, we buy machines every few years that use less energy at home. But it takes a lot of energy to manufacture all of these things. My gut tells me businesses prefer people to be trained to buy the next new thing with flashy lights and supposed efficiency on a regular basis, but they merely pass the buck. It also takes a lot of energy to ship these new machines being bought every handful of years. The added bonus is now we get to recycle more machines or stuff them in a landfill. It also costs energy to move these discarded machines. High efficiency is in the eye of the beholder I guess.
Another thing I would like to point out, although mostly irrelevant here given the minuscule amount of energy LEDs use, is electricity cost. Total cost per kW/h is a case of simple math. It doesn’t really matter what someone says your cost per kW/h is, simply divide the TOTAL cost of the bill by the number of kW/h. For instance, locally we may ‘pay’ 16 cents per kW/h, but if you divide your total bill, it comes out to more like 26 cents. You don’t tax yourself on energy you make after you already paid for an energy system, you pay up front and that’s about it. Obvious exceptions being grid tie systems or trying to sell your energy. Many energy companies have example bills online, so you can check out different areas to get an idea of how much the real cost of energy is in those places.
I don’t think it is fair to exclude the fees of taxes and other charges when pricing out renewable energy, yet I always see people making the same mistake of excluding the total cost of grid power. That doesn’t include tax incentives and other benefits paid to energy companies by tax payers, but it is slightly more realistic to compare your total monthly cost. I don’t know if this is just great marketing by energy companies to slow down renewable growth while they start to switch over themselves, or just a common math problem that is easily confused. There are hidden costs on both sides of the energy debate that are rarely accounted for, and I don’t think there is a one-size-fit-all solution when local conditions can vary greatly from place to place.
In any event, chances are all the LED’s on typical PC builds, and all the little power LEDs on everything in a house probably don’t add up to much more than a few watts. Even if you had an off grid solar PV system, this amount would be so small you wouldn’t even need to add a single panel or battery to adjust for it. If a system isn’t oversized enough to account for a few watts then you will have substantially more significant power issues than dealing with a few LEDs. There are tons of problems with the way people use electricity and how unwilling some people are to deal with even a minor inconvenience as opposed to saving energy. Are RGB LEDs everywhere superfluous and unnecessary? Yes. Are they enough of a waste of energy to be worried about? Absolutely not.
Thank you for an in-depth reply. I know what you mean about the buy and throw away world we live in today.
I love reusing old stuff, especially when you use it for something it wasn’t really made to do.
I know its simple maths but i never thought you could find out what it uses from the manufacture.
Thank you all and i’m in same mind set as your self KleerKut