WB4SON-10 VHF Gateway Power Consumption

Submitted by WB4SON on Wed, 2021-06-16 15:47

Here is a photo of the gear currently in use for the WB4SON-10 gateway. Power measurements taken over the past few days indicate that about 20 watts are consumed every hour; about 0.5 KWH/day or 175 KWH/year. At the going electrical rate in RI, that works out to about $34 of power per year.

That is the total power consumption of the miniPC, switching power supply, radio and interface. It does not include the power consumption of the monitor, which is usually not connected. The 100 AH backup battery will support 60 hours of operation, and the 100 watt solar panel produces about 325 watts of power on average per day (more in the summer, less in the winter). Everything runs off of AC while the grid is up.

Typical PC power consumption ranges from 60 watts for a laptop, 100+ watts for a desktop (up to 400 watts/hour for high end machines), so this is quite a power improvement compared to my original installation, which was consuming about 120 watts per hour.

Image: 
Winlink Linkomatic