Worried about electric bill

at 1400 watts the glowforge should have a maximum power draw similar to a high end gaming PC if that helps

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Thanks for the break-down. Should be easy to see for myself how much of a hit my wallet will get. Judging by your numbers, it won’t be much, which really makes me feel better. Arigato!

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I have a Kill-A-Watt meter in the shop – I’ll try to remember to measure consumption during tonight’s runs.

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This is great stuff, thanks!

It does, thank you!

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True. The GF 1400W is including the filter. The non-filter basic machine is 800W at full power.

The chiller on the Redsail 60W is 800W all by itself. If it were the bigger 100W laser the chiller for that is 1400W. Refrigeration is expensive in terms of electrical draw. (The Redsail also has a 30gal 1.5hp compressor for air on its own circuit.) I don’t know what the water and air pumps on my K40 run but they’re small so not likely a lot - the whole thing doesn’t trip the power strip that’s plugged into.

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I didn’t want to “volunteer” you to test power on, idle and full load (5 minute and 15 minute jobs).

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Back when I used an Epilog, I only turned on the externals when I was cutting.

I run up to 8 3D printers at a time and the highest impact to my power bill in the additional AC from the heat they generate.

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I can take a look at this at the end of the month. Our electric company provides a report of monthly energy usage. It shows that we used nearly 80% more power last month (we set up a PRU on April 1) but that is definitely not just because of the :glowforge:!

Our Godson arrived on the same day as the PRU, and he had his 5th wheel parked on our property and plugged in for 21 of the 30 days in April. His trailer used a lot of power and tripped our breakers more than once (good thing we really love that kid! :wink: ). Thus, last month’s bill/use is not a viable indicator, but I can check again later in the month and get a better guess.

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I think cost of the materials you cut will dwarf the cost of cutting them.

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oh yeah… My wife asked “how can a small piece of weird orange wood cost so much?”

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I was actually surprised that my electricity usage did not increase. The last three months I’ve used 850, 691, 722, 737 kwh. Only the last was a full month with the Glowforge. The surprising thing was that the unit is on 18 hours a day, 7 days a week, and all the lights in the studio basement are on with it. Though I probably only average an hour cumulative each day of actual burn time.

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The good news for us is during the summer, our solar array kicks out about 7.5kw giving us around 50kwh/day on average and during the winter around 15-25kwh depending on snow/length of day. So hopefully that will cover it…

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I switched mine out with LEDs :slightly_smiling_face:

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Since Jan 9th of this year. The Glowforge has used 36.7kWh.
(At the time of the screenshot the unit was/is in use)

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What’s your idle power draw? It’s constantly running the fans… I assume that’s to keep something cool which means that heat must be being generated, i.e. power is being dissipated…

I checked idle draw last night… 40W

Forgot to check the draw with the laser on, though. :confused:

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As it happens I was just looking over @aeva’s shoulder this afternoon while she was measuring power draw. It was about 40 watts standby, 300 watts when engraving, 400 watts when printing if memory serves.

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