Power Consumption

Dia dhuit agus a bheith iontach la fheile Padraig.  We've been around this way before on the forum,  its a bit of a wake up when watts get turned into € & £'s.    My system is a lot more modest,  but its still burning money.   A few years ago my listening room was burning 350 watts of light & we thought nothing of it & Naim power consumption was not an issue.  Now with all my lighting converted to LED & 35 watts, my Naim plus NAS etc on idle is more & its become an issue. 

Time to cut back to a single 555.

If 12 Euros a month is divided by 4 weeks, that's 3 Euros per week or 43 cents per day. Absolute bargain!

Class D amplification is the "green" alternative. Muso can produce up to 300 W power yet consumes only 4 W in standby mode. I'm not suggesting Muso is a substitute for 500 level gear, merely greener and such choices are up to what you value.

The black boxes have green logo's so they only use green energy......

But seriously - I don't like the constant on part of the need for good sound.

Where I live, at 16.5p/unit, my power amp's idle of relatively 'only' about 80w is equivalent to £115 per year - not all the time is idling of course, but I consider that a lot of money to waste. My Musical Fidelity P270 before it was about double - so I decided to remain in the habit of always turning off between listening, despite popular opinion to the contrary, just trying to turn on about half an hour before use to warm up, and I saw no reason to start wasting money when I changed.

One way to view it is that over the life of an amp the money saved on electricity can make a major contribution to replacement, especially if, unllike me, you buy new...

IDLE CURRENT of cds streamers on stand by is extremely low .  class a or class ab amps  switch of power amps only 

I normally switch off the DacV1 and power amp (in my case a more economical 250DR), and I’m content with a XPS-DR and XP5XS for streamer and preamp, respectively.

A friend of mine has moved to valves - these seem to be really power hungry.

S.

Yes it's a waste, but comes with the territory.

Naim stuff sounds a bit crap if powered up and down all the time. 

I reconcile this by noting that for about half the year it costs me nothing. Once the sun is up, even on a dull day, our PV system generates at least enough to cover the system's idling. There is precious little else in the house that is quite so parsimonious with power requirements.

David O'Higgins posted:

I bought a power meter from Amazon and plugged my gear into it (via wireworld matrix). Power consumers are 2*555DR, 552DR, 500ps, Nat01ps, Unitiserve and V1Dac. At idle, these are consuming 122w, going up to 150w at my normal listening level. 

If my maths are right, this means that leaving it switched on all the time is costing me about €12 per month. Anyone else tried this?

I've got one of those power consumption gizmo's too.  When my missus starts ironing, our usage goes way above my Naim kit idle current, so she's agreed she'll stop using her iron.

I thought it would be more of a battle to pursuade her to stop, but she agreed quite readily.    If only I'd read this thread years ago I could have saved a fortune.

Roger

By the way, how did the system sound with the power meter connected into the mains block feeding the system?

If someone can afford a £60,000 stereo, €12 a month to run it is unlikely to be an issue. It is of course depleting resources, and it would be better if it wasn't, but there are lots of other ways to save energy. It would be great if Naim could find a way of maintaining the sound quality while reducing energy consumption - one day maybe. 

I've moved on from a class D 2x30W Nad amplifier to several naim integrated until I settled on a SU. My idle consumption jumped from 0.5W to 35W while my normal listening level consumption from 10W to 100W.

Not to mention my SU sucks almost 1kW a day doing nothing but sitting pretty.

Interesting post, I have a similar set up 555PSx2, 552PS, 500PS, NDX, Radikal & NAS. Add in a few other low power consumers which are constantly on such as Sky+, Samsung PVR, Cordless Phone bases, Clocks, Intruder Alarm, Door bell, Routers and Network devices etc and my smart meter tells me I am consuming about 315w or £0.02p per hour which equates to £14.88 a month... so I reckon your calculation of €12 a month is about right. Worth every penny to maintain top system performance. 

Hungryhalibut posted:

If someone can afford a £60,000 stereo, €12 a month to run it is unlikely to be an issue. It is of course depleting resources, and it would be better if it wasn't, but there are lots of other ways to save energy. It would be great if Naim could find a way of maintaining the sound quality while reducing energy consumption - one day maybe. 

I thought an EU directive required significant reductions with a standby mode.   TV's have gone a long way with this over the last years,  my previous TV reduced standby to about 33% of full power,  the one I have now on full power is 50w & standby 0.5w.

Maybe Naim have a position on this other than the off button,  would be nice to hear what it is 

Michael, Where are you getting electricity at 6p kwh? Im paying almost 13p, and ive shopped around. 

I suppose I should have made it clear that I regard €12 per month as a modest price to power €100k worth of electronics without turning them on and off. Having the ready all the time really enhances the experience.

I really bought the meter to counter my wife's occasional complaint about how much it must be costing to  power the system. It accounts for about 6% of our electricity bill - modest in my view (and hopefully in hers too!)

Nick, I knew someone would ask the unanswerable! I had to do a bit of juggling to make the power meter fit, and I expected it would have a bad effect on the sound, but what I was hearing last night was so good that I can't say it affected it either way. I'll leave it in for a while and then see what happens when I take it out.

Mr Happy posted:

Michael, Where are you getting electricity at 6p kwh? Im paying almost 13p, and ive shopped around. 

 

We've just swapped providers and will be paying 11.7p in the day and about 5p at night. That was the cheapest provider we could find. 

Mr Happy this is where I get totally confused! My electricity unit rate is £10.94 per kWh with a standing charge of 26p per day....I am with Sainsbury's Energy. I feed the rates into my smart meter... ( it is not the actual meter but a wireless device in my office connected to a sensor on the cables feeding the meter) and that is what it is showing.  I have entered the unit rate and the standing charge into the smart meter and this is what it calculates... goodness knows how correct it is!!!

Interesting, David O'H, insofar that I would have expected the meter to inject some noise back into the mains and hence have an effect. Perhaps, though, it is a completely passive device and therefore has no effect. But to leave it for a while and then remove it, is always the best way to notice the effect of something.

Michael, assuming your meter is correctly measuring the 315w used per hour then your stand by bill is just over £25 per month not inc standing charge.

Sometime ago I measured my 500 system stand by wattage. It was 85w on stand by and just over 300w playing at ear splitting levels. At a comfoftable but still quite loud level it pulls 225w. 

This was measured just as a matter of interest though, as turning off and on then waiting for warm up would spoil my enjoyment of the system. I consider the few pounds a month on electric and a few more to cover the higher contents insurance to be part of the cost of having such wonderful music replay at my disposal. 

Mr Happy posted:

Michael, assuming your meter is correctly measuring the 315w used per hour then your stand by bill is just over £25 per month not inc standing charge.

 

 

Agreed (and that is assuming the cost is 10.94p per unit (kwh), not £10.94 as stated!)

These standing charges tend to confuse it all a bit.

My standing charge is £0.225 per day & I pay £0.1039 per unit (kWh),  this averages out around £0.12 per unit.  

Look at it this way. Consider the wear and tear on you gear for switching it on and off each day and the fact that when things die then tend to die during power cycling. It's not a huge chance but it is there and multiply that by the number of boxes you have to get the odds. Bear in mind those odds increas each year as the equipment ages.

Without putting hard numbers down (since the failure rate over X power cycles is not known but we can have a guess), if you feel that the risk over a decade of having one item go down for expensive repair due to this failure and that cost is greater than 12*12*10 = GBP1440, then it becomes cheaper to leave it powered on.

I am a huge beleiver in energy efficiency. I am not a fan of energy conservation. One reduces average consumption (not every device in the home - your hifi being one - will be able to conserve energy and provide the same output. Others will be able to greatly save energy and provide the same level of output) when taken as a whole and reduces real costs. The other is a false economy that requires extra effort elsewhere to make up for the output deficit, increases costs through shorter product lifespans and often increases energy consumption as a whole due to the manufacture of the said replacements.

In short, I'd take the 12 quid on the chin, be happy with the sound and just be as efficient as possible elsewhere in your daily life and stick two fingers up at anyone who nags you about the expense or the impact on the environment because their constant purchasing of energy conserving products is probably giving them a 10 times higher carbon footprint than you with your 24/7 always on Naim gear.