Measuring energy consumption

[Shawly]

I wonder if Speccy could be built to measure the energy consumption of the computer hardware components that Speccy is analyzing. This would be a great boon for energy conscious users, especially in these energy-conscious times with rising energy bills. I have always wondered how much energy each of my computer's component is using, but I don't know how to measure that. Speccy would be the ideal tool to do that, because it already knows how to dissect a computer into its hardware components. By adding a new option through which users can see how much energy each component has consumed during a fixed interval and expressed as watts per hour, this could very much help them to get a better grip on their daily energy consumption and their energy bills. For instance, replacing an energy squandering graphics card with a less wasteful model could be one of many very desirable outcomes. And there might be other beneficial advantages.

I very much hope that this could be effectuated  in one of the next updates.

[nukecad]

I'm not sure just how helpful it would be to measure/know the consumption of each component, surely a figure for the computer as a whole is more use.

I recently checked my laptops consumption by using my Smart Meters In Home Display.

Switch off as much in the house as possible (even things like the fridge to get a stable reading) and see what your IHD says your consumption is in Watts.
Even with everything turned off at the wall you will have a backgrond usage, things like wired in smoke alarms that you can't turn off, and things like your broadband hub and the central heating controller that you don't want to switch off. My homes background load with only things like that running is 20 Watts.

Switch on the computer/laptop (battery fully charged if it's a laptop) and do something that will simulate normal use, I streamed a video on Youtube, see what the IHD says now and the difference is how many Watts the computer is using.

You can do the same for other appliances, turning each on/off in turn.
I've done it for just about every appliance in the house, some things like the boiler and washing machine have different usages in different running states.
Don't forget to turm things like the fridge back on again when you have finished testing.

PS. This laptop is about 8 years old and uses 11 W when streaming a video, my other one is 10-12 years old and uses 15 W.
(Of course they use more if/when charging the battery too)
Out of interest my 1 year old broadband/wifi hub, with an SSD attached, runs at a constant 11 W in active use or not. (so at current electricity prices here costs me 7 pence a day to run constantly).