NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.
Forum Discussion
Total watts consumed
No where in specs can I find total watts consumed by either the base or satellites. Come on, for an appliance that's on 24/7, it's good to know electrical usage. If I physically had one in front of ...
To get accurate stats, you will need to measure power draw at the wall outlet. You also can't go based on the output of the adapter, since netgear overprovisions them significantly in many cases. For power bricks it is never good to run them near their max output consistently, otherwise you will get a far shorter service life out of them, e.g., a 105C 2000 hour capaictor can last 15+ years of continuous use at 50-60C, thus an overprovisioned unit can last a significantly longer time.
Beyond that, it is hard to give an accurate power use since the actual use also depends heavily on usage. For example, are you using just the basic functions of the router, or are you frequently having 20+ devices connected to it and actively doing stuff at all times, while also running 1-2 USB hard drives from the router, while also using the VPN server and QOS?
As usage changes, you will also get some nonlinearity in overall power draw, the same happens with desktop PCs, since you have the component energy use, as well as compounding inefficiencies that are constantly changing since the power supply has its own efficiency curve, then each and every single voltage regulator on the PCB (of which there can be dozens), will each have their own efficiency curve. This is why if you do something like monitor the power going through the EPS 12V connector on the motherboard, as well as the power usage reported by the CPU, the values will be significantly different, and the changes on both will not track linearly with changes in power use by the CPU.
> [...] You also can't go based on the output of the adapter, [...]
That might depend on what one actually wants, which, so far as I can
see, has not been disclosed. "it's good to know electrical usage" is a
bit vague about the actual goal(s) involved.
> As usage changes, you will also get some nonlinearity in overall power
> draw, [...]
Define "usage". If what you really mean is that the power
consumption can vary, then talk about "nonlinearity" (with respect to
some mystery parameter) is little more than gobbledygook.
Basically for power consumption at the wall vs power consumption of active components, thereis nonlinearity in overall power draw of the individual components vs what you will see at the wall. Every voltage regulator has a an efficiency curve for its regulator as all components get closer to their peak efficiency curves, you will see the delta between thewall current draw and the sum total of the component level current draws shrink, and as they move away from the peak efficiency points the delta will increase. As the activity level of an active component changes, the area of the efficiency curve that its power draw corresponds to will change as well. Here is a random example that you will see with many typical DC to DC regulators. Nothing is 100% efficient, and the delta between the efficiency at a given load and 100% represents how much of that energy is being wasted and effectively added to the the actual load on that power rail.
The overall point is that if the user needs to determine the total electrical usage, then it really has to be done at the outlet level. For example, using a kill a watt tool to measure the wattage that it uses over the course of a week, and then calculating an average based on that, which will allow a user to know the effective cost of running the device. Beyond that, due to how variable the power usage can be it would be hard for any company to provide much energy usage data. since it all depends on how the user uses the device.
For a device like this, if they wanted to provide power usage like this, they would have to basically do consumption ranges, e.g listing the idle wattage, and the full load wattage.
With that in mind, it will still be hard to get much info, since it is hard for most complex electronic devices to accurately show their power usage since most self measurement points willnot take into account all losses which impact efficiency.
This is all assuming the root desire for the user is to essentially have an idea of the total cost of ownership of the device, where if power usage is being factored, then to have any level of accuracy, the device will simply have to be measured at the wall for a period of time so that the usage associated with the user's unique usage patterns over a set period of time. That data can then be extapolated over ehatever time period the user wants.
There will be a power draw envelope, and your position in that power usage envelope will depend on your unique usage.
Usually for cost related info, you will get it on devices that have a largely fixed duty cycle by default, e.g., a basic light bulb, or an air conditioner compressor, but for highly variable items there is simply no one size fits all value outside of doing what is commonly done in datasheets and listing the min and max power usage.