Recently I dropped by Jaycar and picked up one of their new items, the MS6115 Power Meter. I’ve been wanting a power meter for ages in Australia like the US 120V Watts Up! or Kill A Watt to measure power consumption by standby devices and also see how power efficient devices are.
Image taken from Jaycar
The specs for the Power Meter:
Max Power Load: 10A, 2500W
Voltage Measurement: 210-301V AC +/- 3%
Amperage Measurement: 0.02-10A +/- 3% (+/- 0.03A)
Watt Power Range: 0-3010W +/- 4% (+/- 10W)
The function button switches between Volts, Amps, Watts, Max Watts, KW/h and Cost so you can see what a device is currently consuming and how unplugging devices affects the power consumption. For example, I plugged it into my TV/VCR power board that was on standby to discover my PSTwo power supply consumes 10w of power doing absolutely nothing, not even plugged into the PSTwo! Going into the settings you can set the price per KW/h for two different times (typically on/off peak) and includes a clock and day switch to get most cases (except for the very complex Synergy on/off peak + shoulder times), so I simply plugged in the standard rate of 13.94c/KW/h from Synergy.
So, after that it’s time to check out what’s drawing what. Of particular interest is the new consoles like the PlayStation 3, which consumed 9w on standby and about 165w powered on which seems a bit high from what other people are saying on the Internet, so maybe it’s just the Aus version with a different power supply. My laptop got 7w standby and 14w powered on (with the large LCD getting 50w and 2w on standby) so it seems fairly accurate even though it can have +/- 10w.
Anyhow, it’s a neat tool to see what devices are really costing you and is cheap at $40 from Jaycar here, there’s probably a few still in stores in Perth if you’re after one.
…yeah, it’d be interesting to have some sorta Web 2.0 site which aggregated and averaged readings for specific models of appliance in different categories and compare it with the star ratings and claimed power usage figures…UNPLUG APPLIANCES WHEN NOT IN USE, PPLZ!…also, can’t wait till our lights go LED…
I had one of these on order for about 6 months, I got
mine a month or two back, its still in bits at the moment
as I was looking to make some mods, the battery life in the
spec is about 3 months, so I was looking to do something
about that, from what I measure it looks like the batteries
should last over a year, so it much better then what the
spec says. It also has poor low power readings, so I might
make a mod to give it a low power range for testing phantom
loads, like a x 100 setting .
Cheers,
Darren
Lukas: True, it would be useful to start gathering these sorts of specifications for the general public so they’re aware of what the standby power cost is the actual and average running cost. For example, my PS3 consumes about 9w on standby, however documentation on line seems to indicate it should be about 2w for US, so I’m curious if the power supply in the Au version just isn’t as well designed. (Wouldn’t be the first or the last time either…)
djam: The 3 month life was if it wasn’t plugged into an actual outlet (which would consume 2w from memory of the specs) to keep powered up. The low resolution is a bit of a worry however it seems fairly accurate given that my LCD screen clocked 2w on standby (which matches reports quite accurately), and that equivalent US model meters are about 1.5% (Watts Up) and 0.2% (Kill a Watt) accurate vs 4%. I’ll have to compare some more tests to see how it ranks with other reports of common devices.
Hi Philip,
What version of the PS2 do you have, the first or the
newer slimline unit, I will have to measure mine and
see what I get.
Yes, it is when its not plugged in, but for me that
will happen a lot, as once I have measured a product
and have no more to do it will go in the draw till
next time, and I would not like it to be flat each
time I go to use it, but if the batteries last about
18 months that’s a huge improvement. I measured its
avg current at about 10uA, it users the power in peaks,
every 500mS it wakes up and draws about 500uA for
about 2mSecs, in between its drawing about 0.5uA.
Cheers,
Darren
I have the new slim unit (PSTwo) which I did the tests on, I also have an older style PS2 that I’ll get around to doing some comparison tests on shortly. I wouldn’t mind comparing the original Au 60 GiB PS3 vs the new 40 GiB model to see how much power that saves by switching to the 65 nM Cell and removing the PS2 GS chip.
I know what you mean about the usage - I guess some sort of on/off switch would be best (or at least, a battery compartment that doesn’t need a screwdriver to open up). I guess if I’m not using it often I’ll just pop the battery out or slip a tab in to stop it discharging.
Hi Philip,
I spent some time lately measuring some of my electronics
yuck. if I switch _on_ a small 11 watt
with this meter, I can only say, at this point it looks
like it very bad at measuring loads. In my office all
my computers, printers, monitors etc on standby draw
about 100 watts
desk lamp (fluro) that total _drops_ to about 80 watts.
The spec on my monitors, 30″ dells says its standby current
is less then 3 watts, the meter says they are drawing 17
watts each.
It seems the meter is not very good at measuring capacitive
or reactive loads, as proven when the desk lamp is switched
on.
I expect this is why your PS2 is indicating the high reading.
Regards,
Darren
Sorry, been flat out on holiday and work since late December:
Odd, I measured my Dell at 2 Watts which seemed on target with the specs, I’ll see if I have some other measured appliances that can be used to measure how accurate the power meter is at low Watt power draw. I’ll also see if I can bundle up a bunch of devices to see if I can get the same odd readings (ie, Watts going down instead of up) as you.