Has anyone hooked up a Kill-A-Watt or similar to any of the Z-Wave switches, outlets or modules to see how much power they use?
It would be interesting to gather some information on this for the various brands and devices in order to see how much the 20 or so Z-Wave devices I’ve got hooked up use. I’ve got the feeling that worrying about “vampire power” for the misc power adapters might not be as bad in comparison. How many power adapters do I need to have plugged into a Z-Wave module that I can turn off automatically before I actually save any power? As for the Z-Wave light switches, it’s not like you can unplug them when you go on vacation (and lose the ability to make the house look lived in while you’re away) …
We did some measurements with a Kill-a-watt. The power consumption by the Z-Wave strip we showed in the video is 1 watt. The vampire power consumed by appliances depends a lot on the type of device. Some newer energy saving TV’s use little vampire power when turned off. But others I’ve seen use well over 20 watts. Cable/Sat boxes, which I think a lot of people don’t turn off when not in use, also can use quite a bit. So if you’re in the premium electric rate already, a home theater system drawing 50 watts continuously in vampire power could cost up to $11/month in “vampire” electricity. The power strip lets you turn off and monitor each outlet individually so you can tell it to leave the PVR on and kill the rest. We’re very anxious to get the first production units of those power strips on our shop.
This isn’t quite what this topic was originally started for, but I have a question on the best switch to choose.
I will be changing out a standard wall switch that has the normal two wires. (Hot) Now a lot of the switches for sale require a neutral, especially for the reapeater option to work.
What is the cheapest option for a standard switch, (up is on, down is off) that doesn’t require a neutral? For RF repeating, is an outlet fine, or should I look to re-wire a couple of switches to get the neutral included?
It’s not top secret. They’re coming from a really big company; you’ll find their current power strips at big box retailers already. We were told they’d be on the market already, but I guess they ran into some delays.
This is an excellent idea. The only concern I’d have is that such a strip should have good surge suppression capacity. Few people would (or should) use cheap power strips for good electronics, especially in areas prone to electrical storms, and I wouldn’t move down in surge management quality despite the attractive power management via Z-wave. Can you comment on that aspect? Z-wave control of individual outlets with good surge suppression would be a great combination.
That is a definate concern to have surge supression.
I’m sure that if they are adding the Z-Wave to each outlet, they will have some sort of surge protection on it.
If they don’t, you can always get a single outlet surge suppressor and put in on the wall outlet, and then put the power strip after it, but that’s not ideal.
I measured the “standby” power consumption of a Leviton appliance controller. It should be the worst case since it has a relay in it. The power seems to be less than .5W on or off, essentially none. Most of the rest of the ZWave devices should be less. I will upgrade my measurement ability and try to get more resolution in the next week or so.
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