From ebay item :

"Description:
Great for Energy Consumption Monitor: used to measure the power consumption, current, voltage, power and cost of the connected appliance, helping save energy and money.
7 Display Modes: it can display time, watt, cost, cumulative electrical quantity, voltage, frequency, current, power factor, minimum power, maximum power, price.
Large LCD display: easy and clear to read. No backlight / With backlight optional.
Electricity Price Setting: you can set the electricity price according to the actual condition in 00.00 COST/KWh~99.99 COST/KWh.
Overload Setting: when current load power goes beyond the max. load power, the letters "OVERLOAD" on LCD will keep blinking to remind you.
"

Yes it says you can.

I run an Eero Pro 6 which uses about 8w so rounded off to 10w for a week works out at about 1.6Kwh which is around 43p a week if my maths is right (and I had a late night )

Make sure you have a unit sold after 2013 when eu updated regulations on network standby.

https://ec.europa.eu/info/energy-climate-change-envi...

Using a Fritzbox 7530 as an access point on 2.4Ghz only takes about 5 watts with about 6 devices online. Enabling 5Ghz band as well adds about 2 watts. Dont turn on more capabilities than you nyeed.

More background here
https://www.google.com/url?q=https://storage.topten....

Added -
About 4.5 watts as vdsl modem dhcp etc, no wifi.
Add 1 watt for dect base station (non eco mode)
Add 2 watts for wifi 2.4Ghz
Add 2 watts for 5Ghz

Nb suspect wifi & dect consumption depend on number of devices connected and distance from base Station

Remember 1 watt always on is about 10Kw hour per year!

Edited by DrBob (Thu 08-Sep-22 15:06:38)

Unfortunately it will cost more next month, but how much is difficult to know as telling me that a price cap of £2,500 does not give me much idea about what the daily charge and unit cost will be.

I don't know for sure but I would assume as the old price cap £1971 and the new one is £2500 then I would guess you would be looking at an approximate 27% increase in charges. But presumably because charging is made up of both standing charge and unit cost then suppliers could split it differently across those 2 charges - so if you are a high user of units then probably better to go for a supplier with a higher standing charge and lower unit cost, for a low user go for lower standing charge with higher unit cost.

That is a reasonable assumption but when the price cap was going to increase from 1971 to 3549 (80%) the unit cost rose from 28 to 52 (85.7%) as the daily charge only rose from 45 to 46. (2,2%) Figures from Ofcom which may get updated!

Average unit rates are some thing I can understand unlike the total annual energy cost figures. It is about 37 years since I last had a gas supply.

The £2,500 total is based on a typical household usage of 2900kWh electricity and 12000kWh gas.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-62833623
https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2022/09/energ...

We'll get details soon, but I would estimate about 37-38p/kWh for electricity under the new price cap.

In reply to a post by smouty:

My router based on an Intel x86 J4125 @2Ghz is rated at 10w max.
It is powerful enough to run my router virtually and a couple of small containers for VPN etc and still sit around 5-6w.

It also offers many times the functionality of an ISP provided router and also route around 2gbit if required. It doesn't have wifi though so you have to factor that in as additional energy usage.

I appreciate not everyone wants to go down this route but it is possible to have a capable router without increasing your energy usage.

I was thinking of going down that road as routers do seem to be rubbish, i have a very old TP link one, that is the best one, but Wi-fi is only 2.4Ghz.

I will stay with the plusnet one I have for a while and maybe have a look later on. when Apple have decided what they are doing with the MAc mini if i go that route, I will have a look at what money i have in my computer update account and them may do something like you have done.

The Mac mini is never likely to be a good choice for this task. You want something that has at least two built in network interfaces (you don’t want to be messing around with USB ones). And you’d also be restricted to running router software that had ARM builds available, the M1 Mini can’t run x86 virtual machines.

One of the low power Intel based mini PCs with multiple network adapters is a far better option, or running the router in a VM on an x86 machine.

I think the Mac Mini is a separate purchase - I if a Mac Mini is bought then upgrading router infrastructure might be worthwhile as a separate provision.