The saga continues!

It turns out that running Counter-Strike: Source still doesn’t put my PC over the 200 W mark. I’ll have to investigate loading the CPU. (POV-Ray?) Anyway, I played CS:S for about 2 hours, and this used 0.17 kWh.

When I was a child, I used to watch the washing machine. It fascinated me. It was better than TV! (But then, when I was I kid, most of the time the only thing that was on was that girl playing noughts and crosses…) Well, today I’ve been reliving the experience, with a twist: I was actually watching the power meter!

With the machine off, it draws 0 W. Select the program you want, and it rises to 1 W. Hit go and the fun begins! It seems the drive motor causes a 200 W spike, settling down to 110 W once the drum is turning. While the drum isn’t moving, it uses about 9 W (presumably for the computer). Actually, once it stopped taking on water, the idle power drops to 3 W, which is pretty low.

A bit later, it took on some more water. Now it takes 300 W to get the drum turning, and 200 W to keep it turning.

And then a bit later on wooooooow! Suddenly the meter jumped to 2,150 W! From the bubbling noises, I’m guessing that’s the water heater kicking in. (It does this if the water from the hot pipe isn’t “hot” enough. I’ve noticed that if you run the boiler for a moment or two before starting the washing machine, you can avoid this step.)

I came by a little bit later. A fast spin apparently uses about 500 W. It sat at this speed for a while, and then briefly kick up to maximum speed. The spike was 700 W, and then it held of 650 W more or less constantly for about 3 minutes, and then the machine slowed down. Power went down to 23 W, and I could hear the motor draining the remaining liquid. And, eventually, the machine shut down completely.

The total for the whole wash was 0.34 kWh. So, in summary, I can play with my PC for hours on end and use less power than one run of the washing machine.

Now I just gotta check out the dishwasher, the vacuum cleaner, the toaster… so much to do, so little time!