This is the first part of my self-sufficiency exploration story. To clarify my reasoning: one of my big goals in life is to have my own piece of land and live more or less self-sufficiently. I'm not talking about a super-remote lifestyle and a "hut in the woods" type of thing, but rather the ability to comfortably live without modern commodities, which seem to expand at the speed of light (often not in a good way). I want to be a person who understands where electricity comes from, how it works, and how you can generate and store it. The same applies to water gathering, food-related skills such as gardening, ingredient prep and storage, cooling and heating techniques, plumbing, woodworking, and much more.
Currently, I’m living in a flat and have a few permanent jobs, so I don’t have the possibility to start practicing these skills in a more suitable environment yet. Therefore, I decided to start small with what I already have.
First things first, I want to understand how electricity works at the everyday level, learn more about energy consumption, and how I can optimize it. I remember the basic stuff from school, but I want to refresh my knowledge and apply it in real life.
OBJECTIVES
- Calculate current power consumption levels
- Create a more power-efficient setup
- Compare setups in terms of energy consumption and limitations
MAIN WORKSTATION
- PC (Intel i5 8400, 48GB RAM, 7.5TB (SSD + HDD), RTX 2060 12GB, OS: Windows 10 Pro)
- MI Display 27 2k
- JBL LSR 305 (2x)
- Steinberg UR22 mkii
- M-Audio Axiom 61
- Beyerdynamic DT 990 Pro (250ohm)
- T-Bone SCT2000, SM-57, Zoom H4n Pro
- Keyboard & mouse
This is my main setup, which I run every day. My casual routine looks like this: I turn it on when I wake up, do all my work tasks, do all other tasks during the day, and turn it off when I go to sleep. So the whole setup is running the whole day. We can fix this!
The biggest limitation in this experiment is my main job, which requires constant downloading of huge 4k S-Log video files, GPU-intensive color-grading, rendering, and uploading those files. Theoretically, I can do all this stuff on the laptop, but as I already mentioned, a radical approach is not the point of this experiment.
So, the most obvious thing to do is to separate "job time" from "everything else time" and use the heavyweight setup only for heavyweight tasks. That's exactly what I'm going to do: use the main workstation only for work (and only for a limited time - e.g., 3 hours in the morning), and use a new test setup for all the other stuff, such as modular synthesis, mixing, website development (VS Code), browsing, and everything else.
Let's look at the test setup!
TEST WORKSTATION
- Matebook Pro 16 (Ryzen 7 5800H, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, OS: Linux Fedora 40)
- Komplete Kontrol M32
- TRUTHEAR x Crinacle ZERO (10ohm)
- SM-57, Zoom H4n Pro
- Charge cycle: 100min / discharge cycle: approximately 600min
Yep, Linux and audio-related work, I know! But considering that I don’t do commercial projects anymore, I basically don’t have to use specific software or work with 100-ish track projects, so we're good! I’ve been running Fedora on this laptop for a few months already, and it's smooth like butter. Of course, there are some Linux-related issues, but I’m gradually learning how to solve them. I’ve already tested VCV, Bitwig, ORCA, Dirtywave M8 Headless (m8c), and VS Codium, where I’m writing this article right now - everything works great, to my surprise! And the cool thing is this setup works for more than a full working day after one charging session, which is only 100 minutes. One problem is there's only 1 SSD slot, so I may buy a 1TB external SSD to keep media stuff there.
CALCULATIONS
To calculate energy consumption of both setups, I’m going to use a wattmeter (electricity usage monitor). I wanted to calculate all the power usage separately for all the devices, but then decided that it would be a lot easier and more accurate to just check the overall power consumption of the two setups.
Let's look at the workstations first, and then check the peripheral devices:
WATTMETER VALUES
- PC Passive - 80W
- PC Music listening with JBL monitors - 100W
- PC Browsing + VS Code - 110W
- PC VCV Rack + Keys - 120W
- PC Video editing - 150W
- PC Video rendering - 265W
- Laptop charging - 75W
To calculate the power consumption of a device, we need to multiply its power consumption (in kilowatts!) by the time the device is used (in hours).
POWER CONSUMPTION OF THE MAIN SETUP
- Editing and rendering = 0.15kW * 2h + 0.265kW * 0.3h = 0.38kWh
- Music production = 0.12kW * 2h = 0.24kWh
- Lightweight tasks (browsing, VS Code, learning) = 0.11kW * 5h = 0.55kWh
- Passive = 0.08kW * 4h = 0.32kWh
- Total per day: 1.49kWh
POWER CONSUMPTION OF THE TEST SETUP
- Editing and rendering = 0.15kW * 2h + 0.265kW * 0.3h = 0.38kWh
- Full laptop charging for the whole day = 0.075kW * 1.66h = 0.12kWh
- Total per day: 0.5kWh
So, theoretically, we can use 3 times less energy without radical solutions - only by optimizing what we already have. For reference: if you have 2 solar panels, they'll produce around 1.5kWh of energy per day, which means we can do all the computer-related work and have 1kWh left for peripheral devices:
- Phone charging - 0.018kWh per day
- Desk lamp - 0.002kWh per day
- WiFi router - 0.16kWh per 24 hours
- Freezer - 0.3kWh per 24 hours
- Total per 24h: 0.48kWh
CONCLUSION
All values and calculations are approximate, but I think it's a good starting point for understanding how much energy your devices need and how you can optimize energy consumption by slightly adjusting your workflow and habits. I hope this article will stimulate readers' interest in this topic; feel free to write to me if you have any thoughts or ideas about power consumption.
This is the first step in my self-sufficiency research. Next, I want to cover some food-related topics, such as gardening and ingredient preparation, so stay tuned!
RESOURCES
- Electrical engineering basics - amazing youtube playlist that covers all the necessary stuff