Smart Hub 2 Power Consumption

[old_email]

I'm glad you've clarified the usage.  BT's Power Consumption document merely states:

Product Name: BT Smart Hub 2
Power Supply Unit Information
BT Plc, London, E1 8EE, UK . Company number 1800000
In Operation 14.10
Network Standy (sic) 8.48
Off mode 0.04
Elapsed time before going to standby mode 20 mins

So apart from lazy typos they could be talking Horse Power, kW, Joules/hr etc.  Smacks of unprofessionalism/AI produced output.

[Eco_warrior]

Interesting information, thank you.  I have never observed the hub going in to network standby mode.  This is possibly because there is always something actively communicating, such as my weather station or smart meter.  As there are so many smart devices now I suspect that the hubs rarely go in to standby mode.

I notice that EE are now offering WiFi 7 with reported power consumption of 30W +.  If this is correct it is pretty alarming!.  Wouldn't it make sense for future hub designs to have the capability of programmable WiFi signal strength so that users could tailor it to their actual requirements.

[naylor2006]

We've come a long way, imagine a house still with 60w bulbs in every room, or even 120watts, imagine a house using 1KW of power just on lighting alone....

No it wouldnt make sense for an ISP to allow for someone to screw around with the WIFI radio strengths, this would cause an additional strain on support and also whilst everyone thunks their radios up to max, because thats what most people will do, this will cause additional interference in built up areas on the very busy 5Ghz band, yes 6Ghz is coming but the point remains the same. ISP's need to send out a fixed hard to break unit, the less settings the better.

So taking that into account, BT/EE make it very easy to use a 3rd party router as there are no obstacles (provided you dont have EETV), you can get your own router and fine one that is super efficient, one that can turn radios off on a schedule perhaps and also one that falls within your eco warrior values.

I dont have the same concerns as you with regards to network power consumption, but what does annoy me is how expensive it is to install solar panels which would solve alot of the wider things we probably do agree on. I looked at solar and it would take us about 10 years to break even on the spend, by which point we may have moved.

[Eco_warrior]

I take your points.  Adjustable signal strength would make sense for me as I like to fine tune my power saving but as you’ve said, the vast majority would just put it up to max.

 I wonder what the theoretical best efficiency of a hub would be.  Perhaps we need government standards on hub power consumption to push it in the right direction rather than covering agricultural land with solar panels (that should be on roofs).

We used to think that CFL lamps consuming 13W to achieve the equivalent of 60W of incandescent light was the best that could be done but then LEDs reduced it to about 9W and the latest ultra efficient LEDs to 4W (at a price that’s not currently worth paying).

[Keith_Beddoe]

See https://bt-digital-voice.blogspot.com/p/bt-smart-hub-2.html

[naylor2006]

I just think where we can reduce power in some ways, it will go up in others, take a look at graphics cards and PC gaming....my 4080 consumes something like 300watts at full tilt (320 officially), the next set of graphics cards in the 5000 series will consume another 100 ontop of that. An extreme example just to illustrate what im getting at, sometimes performance requires power, sometimes additional features require additional power like a better CPU etc.

My WIFI access points consumes max 9w each (and I do have my radios at max), but then I have 8 of them.....my router draws about 2-3 watts, so say I just had my router and one AP I would still be above the hub you speak of and this is premium gear. To contradict the statement I just made, I dont know what the my AP's are drawing in real time, I dont have monitoring for it so the maximum 9w is from my reading actually more like 6w in general use, given what other people have monitored on more fancy POE switches. The radio strength has less of an effect on power consumption that actual use of that access point.

Cant say the government need to focus on routers when it comes to eco considerations, there are far more things that require focus, a router pulling a few more watts I would hope should be way down their list of worries when NVIDIA are asking people to buy 1000w power supplies just to run their new generation of cards.

Doesnt stop you as an individual making your own efforts to reduce your footprint or other similarly minded by researching and finding the most eco friendly router.