Monday, February 5th, 2007
Here’s the electricity consumption of a powered, 50 watt, 8'' subwoofer, as measured with my Kill-a-Watt:
| Mode | Watts |
| off (aka “phantom load”) | 5 |
| idle | 5 |
| playing | 8 |
The subwoofer in question is the baby Polk Audio sub from a couple years ago, now discontinued. It claims continuous output of 50 watts, with peaks at 100 watts. In practice, the Kill-A-Watt showed it drawing about 8 watts of power when playing loud enough to rattle stuff on my desk, and possibly my fillings. (It is sitting in a corner of the office, though, which would tend to artificially boost the volume at a given power level.)It’s disappointing that the unit draws five watts even when switched off. The eternally glowing LED on the back panel is a giveaway, I suppose. At 9¢ per kWh, it costs about $4 a year just to plug this subwoofer in. And it’s been sitting here plugged in for the better part of three years. Argh.
Tags: kill-a-watt, polk audio, phantom load
posted to channel: Conservation
updated: 2007-02-06 05:56:11
