Sunday, January 1, 2012

How much does a Sonos Connect:AMP (ZonePlayer 120) cost to run?

I've borrowed a Power-Mate Lite from a mate and have taken some readings to monitor Sonos power usage as I wasn't sure how much it would cost me to run three Sonos Connect:AMPs (ZP120) all year in-case it was worth considering put them on some sort of power timing device to turn them off overnight.

I'm on Red State energy at and have set the readings at 28 cents per kWH which is the "Summer step one" rate ex-GST.

Here are the readings of the Sonos players in an idle state connected via the WIFI bridge. I let the Sonos boot, and then reset the Power-Mate let it monitor the device for 10 minutes.




So just under $50 to run three Sonos players on idle for an entire year. Better than I expected.

Here are the Power-Mate readings streaming Absolute Classic Rock Radio over the WIFI bridge at half volume  with 8" Polk Audio Ceiling Speakers attached.

The meter was reset while the music was playing and run for about 5 minutes.




$23.78 Australian dollars a year at 27c per KWH (85.347kWh in a year). Cheaper than I thought really for playing music non-stop at a reasonable volume for a whole year.

I've also finally gotten around to repairing the damage to the ceiling in the kitchen after installing the kitchen speaker. I initially glued the gap with liquid nails and braced it with a piece of timber on a step ladder. After drying there was still a gap remaining on some parts of the crack which I then cleaned up with a Dremel (with a sander attachment) and then puttied up with remaining gaps white Wood Master which I got from Bunnings. I let the Wood Master dry and have since sanded it and it now just waiting to be painted.


Before


After
 
(without painting)


3 comments:

  1. Did it make any difference to the idle power consumption if they were set to mute?

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  2. My understanding is that when the player is paused the AMP will turn into standby mode, so turning on mute wouldn't really make a difference.

    I took some readings to confirm this and power usage slightly increasd by ~0.1W (probably the usage by the big green Mute LED) when the ZonePlayer is idle.

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  3. You can reduce the power consumption by about 2 Watts by disabling the WiFi.

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