Many utilities have website apps where you can see your watt-hour consumption on a hourly/daily basis. This can help you troubleshoot by looking for the times where the peaks or anomalies occur. Hopefully it's something simple like a neighbor plugging his electric car into your outdoor socket, or a nearby homeless camp with a really long extension cord using your outdoor receptacle.
Electric bill any high
My electric bill has almost doubled since I added streamer and DAC. . How can I reduce consumption?
My Spectral amp and MIT Powerbar are plugged into the wall. My Spectral CD player, Spectral preamp, Aurender Streamer, and Berkeley DAC are plugged into s MIT Powerbar.
My preamp and DAC are always on. As is the Z powerbar. My CD player is on standby. I turn off the amp and streamer.
Is there snythungvi can do or do I just have to pay the Man for this expensive hobby.
I believe you power amp is pure Class A. Unless it has new, advanced technology like Krell iBias it will draw considerable power while in standby and even idle mode. I believe my Krell 300 XD draws like 2 watts in standby. Regardless, I live in Arizona and am installing solar this month as @wyoboy referenced so soon most of my power bills will be a thing of the past. Your other gear (streamers and DACS), draw very little current . |
A couple of summers ago I had an outrageous DWP bill that was almost triple what I used to incur. I was advised to pay it upfront and look into it as they'd simply credit my account should there have been some error. I took photos of my meter reading and kept track of it to see if it was running incorrectly and all it showed was that everything was normal. They tried to say I wasn't reading the meter correctly which drove me nuts. I even got one of those metering devices that you put between what you're testing and the wall outlet and got normal readings as well on all the major appliances I have. Eventually they sent out a meter reader to double check on things and it turns out the first guy misread my meter. You see, there are 3 banks of meters in a long, dark hall and mine is with the last group furthest in. Maybe it's something as simple or similar to that. All the best,
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@deep_333 LOL |
I have all of my components plugged into a Furman Power Conditioner which shows how much power the entire system (monoblocks, preamp, dac, streamer, cdt) is using at any time. Whole system draws about 0.8 watts when in standby, and about 1.2 watts when I'm listening. I don't know what your electric rates are, but for me this equates to approximately $100 per year. I also have an Emporia monitor system installed in my main panel, so I am able to monitor electrical use of all major appliances in the house. Often, when a major appliance begins to go bad, it's electric use dramatically increases, as others on this post have noted. One surprising major user in my house is my media room electronics (separate from my two channel system. ) I can see a huge jump in usage when I turn on the 85 inch TV. |
There is snythungvi you can do indeed. Turn on stuff 15 mins before you start listening to music. Turn it off when you’re done/ don’t leave it running 24/7. Did someone tell you that the sound quality skyrockets if you leave everything on 24/7? That’s another foolish myth. |
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Unless you are now listening to music much more often this doesn’t make sense in light of what a whole house’s normal electrical use is. Streamer/DAC/preamp are all pretty low wattage appliances, though I think the Spectral could be a little high, 30-60 watts. What does make sense is if yo are running your AC more often due to summer heat or a bad fridge or electric water heater. If in doubt the way to tell how much power things take is to buy something like this and actually measure the current / power each takes. |
A streamer and a DAC shouldn't double an electric bill, unless your bill was $1/ month to begin with. My 80wpc tube amp only costs about $3/month to run daily. There's probably something else drawing power such as your A/C, faulty refrigerator(s), etc. If your A/C is low on refrigerant due to a leak, it will run constantly, trying to keep up, costing $$$. I'd look elsewhere for issues with the bill. |