As my electric bill escalates, I often wonder, should I be concerned with the daily expense of leaving things run, or should I turn everything off when finished with a BB session? I have a $28.00 tester from Menards that answered several questions concerning every day expenses. First, using a single source 120 vac. outlet, I have my usual suspects up and running. Two QSC K12 powered speakers, one ALLEN&HEATH ZED 10fx mixer, an Ampeg GVT15H, AMPEG V4BH, DigiTech Vocalist Live4, HP Windows7 CORE i7 lap top, and a Yamaha MD4s. @ a rate of 9 cents per KW: 7hrs and 20 min.=1.63 KWH =.14 cents. :)So, I say let her run and enjoy the Best Buy available any where. Also for what is 's worth: a 12 gallon per day humidifier 58 hrs. and 45 min. cost .27 cents, An Eden Pure GEN4 heater, outside temp.@ 20 degrees fare., 98.18 hrs. cost $7.39. I hope someone can put these figures to good use.-----Leon

We went out to dinner last night and spent $50. That was an intro, chorus, and 2 bar ending with no repeats.

Yep, Inrush Current at startup can easily cost more than what the meter rolls for steady state idling.


--Mac

The question of "let it run, or shut it off" is more than simply the electrical cost.

That's the cheapest part of the equation.

I turn my studio gear off. Leaving it on subjects it to electrical spikes from the utility company 24/7 vs the 2 hrs or so I'm working on it. These things are coming down the line constantly. So use a good surge suppressor all the time. But lightning and utility switching surges can be larger than the MOV's can handle.

Also, when the gear is on, the electrical voltage is a pressure that affects the lifespan of the components. Any time there is voltage and current in a circuit, that pressure is there AND heat is being created. Heat also shortens the component lifespan.

Turning the computer off also clears the memory cashe which is a good thing to do.

The down side is that every time you turn it on, you cause a bit of a shock to the circuit as the current rushes in to charge things up and get it running again.

I weigh the options and choose the shut down. Besides, look at all that money I'm saving as electricity prices skyrocket.

Guitarhacker, All good points for sure. I do not let everything run 24/7, but then again, now I know that it only cost a few pennies to leave it on should I choose to. I am surge protected, X three power strips.----Leon

As with most subjects of this type, I weigh the advantages and disadvantages on a daily basis and govern shutdown accordingly. For example, if I'm scheduled to leave the home office in the morning, no sense leaving it all turned on during that time.

On the other hand, if I'm working on something and have to take a break from it, I might choose to just leave everything up and running.

And everybody who uses electronic components of any kind should invest in good surge protection at a minimum, UPS with built in surge protection is great stuff. Power goes off, gear stays on. Allows for graceful shutdown if nothing else, often such a power down is short enough to allow me to just continue working through it while the UPS powers the junk.


--Mac

Rachael, I am glad that you can afford to scoff at the rising cost of living. Some can not afford a trip thru Mc D's until the 3rd. of the month rolls slowly around each month. -----Leon

When finished I turn everything off, why? Because my Dad would have had a foot in my backside if I did not . . . now Dad has been gone a long time but old habits are still hard to break.

Later,

Regardless of power consumption, remember that hard drive is spinning about 10 million revs each a day (for at 7200 rpm drive). Every hour it spins takes another hour off its total working life. Even SSD's have a finite operating life.

Have backups....

That's a good point to consider about the life of the HD, however I mostly leave the pc on for one reason; automatic system updates occur quite often and also the weekly scans for viruses malware and such, which mostly is setup to run automatically in the middle of the night. If it is turned off your liable to start any updates or scans, so here you are waiting for this thing do their stuff while you wait and often times you are asked to reboot to complete whatever it was doing. So I'm lazy I guess.

Mike B.

Of course, the drive manufacturers will state fantastic MTBF values, potentially 50+ years. In the real world, my track record is slightly less than this.

Nothing wrong with leaving systems up continuously. I work in an industry where we have lights-out server rooms full of industrial computers running 24/7. Just make sure you have backups, that's the key!

Interesting you thought my comment was scoffing. Point was I pissed away $50 in one night and got short termed enjoyment. BIAB gives as much enjoyment and cost must less. I'll take your .09/kwh vs my .11/kwh any day.

Lighten up. I was making a joke.

I knew what you meant, Rachel.

And also considered the holiday as well, being a happily married old lovebird here.

I think that forum communications can be easily misconstrued, for the simple fact that the written word simply is not able to convey the full communication that the spoken word does, even though a forum isn't exactly poetic or song lyric writing, the lack if prosody in the written word still applies.

You go, girl!


--Mac

I turn my gear on in the morning or when I first use it, leave it on all day or until I leave, then I shut it down and unplug everything from the AC. If a thunderstorm approaches, I do the same thing.

I live in a very high lightning zone. One of the highest in the nation and even though the incidence is high, the chances of it affecting me are low. Since 1957 when we moved here, it's happened twice.

1) I went to lunch, thought I unplugged everything, but left a hardware sampler plugged it. When I got back it was toasted, the repair charge was $600

2) A sudden storm came up, I was in the process of unplugging everything, sparks flew through the house, and wiped out a printer/copier/fax machine.

Many, many years ago I took a job as a telephone repairman. I thought I was getting out of the music business and becoming a fine, upstanding, productive citizen. It didn't work out that way. I was playing music still on the weekends and when a good opportunity came up, bye, bye ma bell.

Anyway I went to a house that got hit. The drop line from the pole to the house was just neoprene, all the copper was gone and it was brittle to the touch. The metal flashing on the eave of the house was melted to the drop wire. The lightning protector was gone from the side of the house, and I found a good sized piece on the back fence. There was a black stripe on the exterior wall where the ground wire used to be. The wire going from the protector to the wall phone was stiff with red, green, yellow and black insulating plastic dripping out of it, the phone itself looked good until I took the cover off, it was black and melted inside. And there were two holes in the ceiling in the master bedroom over the bed. The customer said the lightning ran around in the attic for about 15 seconds before it punched the holes in the ceiling.

Lightning can do strange things. I don't keep my stuff plugged in when I'm not here, when I'm sleeping, or when as storm approaches.

The electric bill is nothing in comparison.

Notes

I had a couple of grand worth of equipment in two connected rooms blown out last summer by a lightning strike, so I value what Bob is saying. But would having the equipment turned off at the time (some was, but most was on) made any difference? It traveled between rooms over my remote speaker cables. I think I would have had to have physically unplugged everything to avoid what happened.

As far as the OP's question, most of my equipment is on as I mentioned, connected to the mains through some protected Furman power strips. The computer, router and modem are on a UPS. I have some things like speakers and the printer on one Furman that gets switched off when I leave the room, but the computer and my hardware synth and mixer stay on. [The firewire connection is too flaky to work every time I power up, so I just leave it on.] My ammeter says 1.4 amps most of the time, so I'm not much worse than a couple of light bulbs worth. In fact, since I replaced all the incandescent bulbs in my house with LEDs, overall I'm ahead.

Proper lightning protection is indeed possible, but usually outside the expenditure that the average homeowner is willing to invest.

Polyphasor protection is used on commercial gear, to include radio and tv transmission sites, towers that attract lighrning all the time, direct hits, and safely dissipating the lightning strikes while protecting antennas, transmission lines and transmitting gear.


When Polyphasor belonged to its originator, "Dr. Lightning" - he built the company up by offering the "no questions asked" full replacement of any gear that was damaged or destroyed by lightning that was protected by his proprietary systems. The only provision was that the polyphasor system had to be installed in strict accordance with their engineering instructions.

To my knowledge, he never had to make good on that guarantee. A good thing, too, for Polyphasor was used to protect that gimongously high powered 100,000 Watt television transmitter site down in Florida.

A typical transmission tower, ground-mounted or on top of a tall building, represents a serious lightning rod and lightning attractor, yet the properly installed setup can take the hits 24/7/365 without the transmitter even going off the air.

Since it is possible to protect all that from strikes, it is certainly possible to protect your home. All horror stories from the unprotected/improperly protected aside, that is.

In the home, at least for US power installations, it is essential that the main power box be grounded directly bonded to the 8 foot or longer grounding rod installation, also essential for that grounding to be inspected periodically for any signs of deterioration. All other grounds, including telephone, should be bonded to that same single point or all protection bets are off.

Ironically, it is typically not the amount of power from the initial strike that damages electronic equipments, it is the backwards flow of DC current that happens AFTER the initial strike completes and the magnetic field that it generated around all of the associated wiring falls, generating a current in the opposite direction on all those conductors. Of course, that whole event might only last a few hundred milliSeconds, but the sheer amount of voltage that back pulse can rise to is what damages things like semiconductor junctions in your gear.

All of the recording gear, including any pcs, connected to power via a good quality UPS system with surge protection, connected to good power line with good ground can go a long way in preventing lightning or power surge damages to your gear, whether that gear is powered on or off at the time. Yes, semiconductor junctions inside gear that isn't turned on can still be destroyed by lightning strike if not protected properly.


--Mac

Great info, thank you.

Hi Rachael

I picked up exactly where you were coming from - $50 for a one-off, and no repeats - quite the opposite to BiaB.

And frankly I really liked the 'musical' way you delivered your observations

Good for you!

I can certainly appreciate a good lightning story since I have been in electrical servicing and security systems installation and servicing most of my adult life (where I worked a productive "real job")

I've seen lightning do some really bizarre things in all the years I have worked in these fields.... I have a number of lightning stories but will spare you my ramblings. OK... just one that was funny at the time... to me anyhow....
A customer's phone line got hit. The surge protector on the phone line shorted out but the alarm dialer was OK. The device did it's job. The phone guy comes down and we had determined there was a break in the line due to the lightning. So he used a "thumper"... it sends a high voltage spike repeatedly through the wire to find the break, with a receiver. He's walking through the weeds along the driveway pushing the reciever probes in the ground, when he starts "dancing and yelling"..... turned out that the break was located near a fire ant nest in the ground and as he was slowly closing in on the break the ants were pouring out of the ground since they really did not appreciate the electrical jolts through their nest. They found his legs, and attacked.

Yes, no matter how good a surge protection device is, a spark that will jump from a cloud 3000' up to the ground is not going to be stopped by a tiny MOV in a direct primary strike.

Regardless, I still have plenty of surge protection from the service mains coming in to the UPS/surge on the outlet where the gear is plugged in. Phone lines are an often overlooked source of surges. I have addition surge on my phone and internet lines as well.....

so far, so good, as I've only had minor damage to an old dial-up modem on a phone line to this point. A 10ohm resistor got fried in the line in.

I shut down the studio gear when I hear thunder and will only work on a laptop running on battery if I really need to keep working.

I took care of that problem years ago by dumping land lines, the wife and I just use cell phones. Although I do have the internet line go through my surge protection.

Loved the fire ant story.

You would be surprised how much power devices are using even in "stand-by" mode. This is a handy way to save some energy money, and doubles as a line check at gig venues:



http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000RGF29Q/?tag=mh0b-20&hvadid=2838926023&ref=pd_sl_9d6jr2u975_e

After working in two day gigs, one the Phone man and second a Cable TV engineer, I am of the assumption that there is no foolproof surge protection from a lightning hit.

That's why I unplug. I think that's probably the best surge protection I can afford.

Insights and incites by Notes

Rachael, I can understand your statement, but maybe, just maybe a short prefix would enlighten those of us less educated folks -----Leon

Mac internet has been off at my house for about 5 days so Ive only just come to this..Ive got a small recording studio for writing songs only.what would give me the best protection maybe not total in case of a surge..the studio is away from the house about 50 mtres.Cheers Frankie

There is no way to do it in this fashion.

Each installation must be evaluated on site by a knowledgeable and likely licensed Technician, Engineer or Electrician in order to be able to make any sort of viable recommendation.


--Mac