Whenever people see my collection of arcade games, one question I invariably get is, “How much electricity do those things use?” It’s fairly easy to estimate; since most arcade games utilize a CRT tube and a power supply comparable to those found in most home computers, an arcade game uses “about” the same amount of electricity as a home computer with a CRT monitor.
What I’ve found over the years is, most people don’t believe me. Although it makes logical sense, some primal part of our brains thinks that arcade games should use more power because they’re so much bigger. And so, over the weekend, I decided to find out exactly how much electricity an arcade cabinet consumes.
For those that missed my post last week, I got a Kill-A-Watt for Christmas, a device that tells you exactly how many Kilowatt hours a device uses. Last Saturday I plugged the Kill-A-Watt into the wall, plugged my Centipede cabinet into the device, and let it run for almost 24 hours.
The cabinet actually drew much less electricity than most modern home computers do. Over 768 minutes, my Centipede only used only 1.46 kWh of electricity, an average of 0.11 kWh. That means this particular cabinet costs me 18 cents a day, $5.53 a month, and $67.27 a year if I were to keep it turned on 24/7. Since I only turn my machines on to play them, these things cost me essentially nothing to run. Even if I were to fire up all 25 games at the same time, I’m still looking at using only $4.50 a day in electricity. I have a few machines that have larger monitors, so I’ll probably run another test in the near future to see if that makes a noticeable difference.
For comparison purposes, I also ran a test on my PlayStation 3 last night. With the unit turned on but idle (ie: not actively playing a game, which means both the hard drive and DVD motor were idle), the PS3 used significantly more electricity than my Centipede arcade cabinet. Over 58 minutes my PS3 used .16 kWh; that’s .17 kWh, which converts to .27 cents an hour, $8.02 a month, and $97.61 a year. The PS3 actually used 45% more electricity — and again, that’s while just turned on and idle. Maybe this weekend I’ll run some tests that compare my game consoles in all three states (off, on but idle, and in use).
But yeah, there ya go; my Centipede cabinet costs me approximately 1 cent/hour in electricity to run.
(It’s for sale, btw. $200. Has a minor RAM/graphics glitch. Fix it, or replace the PCB for another $100 on eBay.)
I think you are way too bored with Susan gone! Susie, come home quick!
Wow! Who’d have thought that arcade games don’t use that much electricity??? It’s good to know… :D
I wish that there were a mini-mini-cab format like in Japan — smaller than our mini-cabs. That would be perfect for apartments!
Aw, your mom reads your blog! Mine doesn’t read mine. Go Mom!
” Over 58 minutes my PS3 used .16 kWh; that’s .17 kWh, which converts to .27 cents an hour, $8.02 a day, and $97.61 a year”
$8 a day for a PS3 just on idle? That would equate to $80 over 10 days, which cannot be correct. That would mean your hydro bill in a month, from the PS3 alone would be ~$250!
Brian is right — it was $8.02 a month, not $8.02 a day. The original post has been updated — thanks for the catch!
No worries!