[aclelland]

Yeah I'm confused by this article. I've got a Virgin Media TV box which used 25w while on standby. Maybe I'm doing the math wrong but:

25w * 24 * 365 = 219000w or 219kw per year.

At my current electricity rate that's £39.42 per year at a very minimum just for the TV box.

[MauranKilom]

The math is right but the units are messy. Watts are already energy/time, which is correct for the 25 W figure, but the 219 should be kWh/year.

25 W * 24 h/day * 365 days/year = 219000 Wh/year = 219 kWh/year

Which makes me notice that 1 kWh / year = 1000 Wh / year = 1000 Wh / (356 * 24h) = 0.117 W. So you can quickly estimate that a device with x Watts of constant consumption will have you paying for roughly 10 x kWh in electricity a year. With electricity costs on the order of 20 cents/kWh, that means a rule of thumb is "double the wattage, that's how many $ it'll cost you to have it running all year".

[egeek]

Your math is right, if you're not recording at night then you can switch it off at night (we switch one of ours off at night on a timer)

[ars]

A good approximation is that 1W of power for a year costs you one Dollar (or Euro) per year.