How does power consumption with appliances work? For things like refrigerators and coffee machines, is there a low draw of power since it’s in an “idle” mode and only ramps up when it’s cooling or being used? Same with my computer? My Graphics card is rated to 341w. Is that under the highest of loads or is that a constant draw?
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Varies appliance to appliance.
Many appliances will have a little idle circuitry/lights/etc when “off” so might consume a few watts (say 20c every 100 hrs of idle or less).
Appliances like a fridge or oven typically cycle on/off to keep the correct temperature. So they’ll use their rated power during on the on portion of the cycle. Say a fridge is rated 500W and cycles on 25% of the time to hold temperature, cost is 0.5kW*25%*$0.2 per kWh = about 2 cents an hour.
Other appliances like PCs, higher end fridges/ACs (“inverter” based ones) can run at a variable power level. Your GPU light use like 20 W when you’re browsing the internet but 100W when you’re playing a game. The rated output is the max usage.
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