rationalskepticism.org

The_Metatron wrote:My neighbor wants to buy a new tablet computer. She never once considered the new electrical load it will add. Admittedly, a tablet isn't going to use a lot of energy. Far less than a laptop or desktop computer. But my point is, she didn't even consider the electrical load.

Meh, the power that thing will suck from the wall will cost cents per week - quite right to not worry about it. Compared to heating, refrigeration, and hot water, stuff like tablet computers are for all intents and purposes free.

Calculating electrical load is a two-edged sword. We're planning to take my wife's home office off-grid (using solar), so she can work during outages, which are a bit too frequent in our semi-remote location. We borrowed some load meters, and while we had them we calculated the cost of the portable aircon whatsit that we use to cool the kids' bedrooms down in summer, thinking that knowing the cost would make us less inclined to turn it on unless it was super-hot. In fact, it cost about half of what we thought, so we ended up using a bit more than we had been...