CCTV Running Cost - Electricity

Dave Lonsdale

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Here in the UK, the price of electricity has risen sharply and will continue to rise. This has prompted me to measure my CCTV system's power consumption and calculate how much it will cost to run over the year ahead. My system has grown over the years, now comprising:-
  • Blue Iris PC - headless HP i5-10500 with T600 GPU, dual NIC, 16GB RAM, 250GB SSD, 8TB purple drive
  • Trendnet TPE-T160 POE+ switch
  • TP-LinkTL-SG1008D gigabit switch
  • SW801 POE switch
  • TP-Link TL-SG1008MP gigabit POE+ switch
  • 16 cameras (13 Dahua and 3 Hikvision)
  • 5 small discrete IR illuminators plus the use of some IR and LEDs within the cameras
The measured total power consumption is 178W (268VA) - daytime and 222W (305VA) - at night
Of this, 47W (59VA) is the BI PC in my main living room. Hence, over one year, say 2/3 of the 47W makes a useful contribution to my central heating. However, the power consumed by everything else is lost to the external environment. So, the nett power "wasted" is 142W (daytime) and 190W (at night).
  • Using a simple 50/50 day/night split over one year, this is an average wasted power consumption of 166W.
  • The energy consumed over one year is therefore 166W x 8760hrs / 1000 kWh = 1,454kWh
  • In the UK, the current price of electricity is 49p per kWh, discounted by the UK Government's "Energy Price Guarantee" to 34p per kWh for domestic consumers until end March 2023.
  • The cost of running my CCTV system over the next year will therefore be £600 (US$700), significantly more than I had realised.
The cost of energy is certain to increase further next April. I'm still mulling this over, but any idea of adding an LPR camera and more wildlife cameras is now on hold...
 

wittaj

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Sell it all and get solar powered Arlos :lmao:

But seriously, that sucks. We don't realize how much power all this stuff can use.
 

CanCuba

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Here in the UK, the price of electricity has risen sharply and will continue to rise. This has prompted me to measure my CCTV system's power consumption and calculate how much it will cost to run over the year ahead. My system has grown over the years, now comprising:-
  • Blue Iris PC - headless HP i5-10500 with T600 GPU, dual NIC, 16GB RAM, 250GB SSD, 8TB purple drive
  • Trendnet TPE-T160 POE+ switch
  • TP-LinkTL-SG1008D gigabit switch
  • SW801 POE switch
  • TP-Link TL-SG1008MP gigabit POE+ switch
  • 16 cameras (13 Dahua and 3 Hikvision)
  • 5 small discrete IR illuminators plus the use of some IR and LEDs within the cameras
The measured total power consumption is 178W (268VA) - daytime and 222W (305VA) - at night
Of this, 47W (59VA) is the BI PC in my main living room. Hence, over one year, say 2/3 of the 47W makes a useful contribution to my central heating. However, the power consumed by everything else is lost to the external environment. So, the nett power "wasted" is 142W (daytime) and 190W (at night).
  • Using a simple 50/50 day/night split over one year, this is an average wasted power consumption of 166W.
  • The energy consumed over one year is therefore 166W x 8760hrs / 1000 kWh = 1,454kWh
  • In the UK, the current price of electricity is 49p per kWh, discounted by the UK Government's "Energy Price Guarantee" to 34p per kWh for domestic consumers until end March 2023.
  • The cost of running my CCTV system over the next year will therefore be £600 (US$700), significantly more than I had realised.
The cost of energy is certain to increase further next April. I'm still mulling this over, but any idea of adding an LPR camera and more wildlife cameras is now on hold...
Very good analysis!

I live in a tropical climate and the heat given off by my NVR costs me money in terms of air conditioning! The other side of coin so to speak.

I estimate my total wattage to be around 70W. I run everything but a video doorbell monitor off the NVR.

Because of power outages (some scheduled, some not) here in Cuba, I invested in a 12V 150Ah gel battery array to keep my cameras running. I hooked it up to a UPS and runs the system throughout all but the longest power outages. We went almost 5 days without power a month ago due to Hurricane Ian. Everything has its limits.

But, yeah, there's always a cost associated with running these systems. We need to balance physical security with economic security.
 

tigerwillow1

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Could it be a bit less worse than you're thinking, with the heat from the 3 switches also released into the house? The specs for the TPE-T160 give an idle draw of 10 watts. I didn't find that spec for the other 2 switches, but I'd think the 3 of them together must be dissipating at least 30 watts, maybe more with the POE loads in play. Crunching numbers gives me each camera drawing about 6.3 watts during the day, which is about 50% more than my various dahua cameras draw. My cicso 24 port POE switch idle power spec is 26 watts, pretty much in line with your assortment of 3 switches. Is your UK power metered in VA? In the US it's strictly kWh for residential service. Prices vary a lot across the country. Mine is about $0.11 per kWh. I've seen info that other places are double that, or even a bit more.
 
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