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rhudejo t1_j0496h9 wrote

Reply to comment by killercow777 in Does a kettle use more electricity than a TV? How much power your gadgets use by diacewrb

There are some easy rule of thumbs to see how much power stuff is using:

- If it gets really hot, it sucks lots of power: good hair dryers, heaters, kettles, ACs, induction hobs (these can be huge, 5000W+ when running at max on multiple zones), beefy PCs,...

- If it uses a transformer (so less than the mains voltage), it does not use lots of power: anything that runs on USB, laptops, routers, door bells...

Thats it, these simple rules should cover 90+% of your appliances. There are of course exceptions but these are not typically part of a household like stuff with beefy motors like industrial power tools, elevator motors, ...

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SpaceBucketFu t1_j05o370 wrote

Your comment is kind of misleading. Having a transformer is kind of irrelevant. The truth of the statement is anything that creates heat in direct use of the appliance. So yeah, hair dryers, kettles, shit like that. A transformer just changes voltage, and the power supplies you mentioned aren’t even referred to as “transformers”. They’re actually switch mode power supplies. They have small transformers in them, but that’s not the primary component of the device either.

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Dje4321 t1_j0kuc93 wrote

This is correct except for the transformer part. Loads of appliances use a transformer while consuming huge amount of electricity (IE Microwave and Gaming PC). Its just used to move the total voltage up and down and has no effect on the total power draw as the amperage drawn will change proportionally to the voltage. (10V@1A == 1V@10A)

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