Electricity rates are supposed to increase drastically in Ontario this year. They’re supposed to increase by 16 to 17% !

So, I’m often turning out lights, turning off DVD players, putting the computer to sleep, etc. in our house.

Just wondering how much electricity my small HO layout would use? My impression has been that it’s very low, almost negligible, but I still thought I’d toss this question out here. I often run my trains about every other night for an hour or so — would this use up much electricity? I think this would be hard to measure (or calculate) though.

Thanks,
Rob

Does your power pack have a wattage rating? If it says something like "75 watts", then you are using the equivalent of a 75 watt light bulb. You can buy circuit testers that measure how much electricity an item is using. Simply plug into the wall, and then plug in whatever device you want to test.

While every little bit helps, usually things like a model railroad use only a tiny fraction of what the refrigerator, stove, water heater, or air conditioner use. In other words, if you quit running your trains entirely, you would probably save less than a dollar over the course of a month, even with the higher rates.

DC, right ? Look on backside of transformer. It says how many watts the thing will pull. Multiply by hours run per night (1 hr) to get watt-hours per night. Divide by 1000 to get kilowatthours. Multiply by price per kilowatthour.

A 100 W transformer will use 0.1 kilowattshours per night. So it will take you 10 days to use a single kilowatthour. Which costs you something on the order of 8 cents or so, if a quick google search on electricity prices in Ontario can be believed. Call it about 24 cents a month (about 30 days a month, 3 x 10 days). After a 17% increase, it will cost you about 24 cents x 1.17 = 28 cents a month. Up four cents a month.

A 200 W transformer will cost you twice as much (ie about 48 cents a month before increase, about 56 cents a month after a 17% increase).

Plug in your own wattage and your own electricity prices if you want a more accurate calculation.

I wouldn't worry overly much about the increase in electrical power prices :-)

Smile,
Stein

Geeze Rob,

If you are that worried about the price of electricity...

It's time to switch to live steam!

The Ontario Grits are getting a lot of heat from the "higher that expected" cost of rolling out the HST.

They may pull back on the Hydro hike as a result. [Maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part...]

Anyway. Hydro is calculated by Kilowatt-Hour.

Here's a link to figure out Kilowatt Hours:
http://www.ehow.com/how_2172446_calculat...nergy.html

So, you need to calculate how many watts your power pack uses. It may say, or you may have to calculate the watts from Volt / Amps.

For power usage, you have to look at the input side of your power pack: ~120VAC, ?amps, ?watts.

Not the output side: ~12+VDC....

Hope this helps...

More info:

My MRC power pack says an output of 16 VA (or 16W). That is the output, and I can only estimate how much power it actually draws from the wall. Remembering physics class, I assume it will draw more than the rated output from the wall, as some power will be lost as heat (the power pack gets warm). If I assume a relatively conservative 75% efficiency of the electronics and transformer, that equates to about 22W total from the wall, or rounded up to about 25W, or 0.025 kilowatts. Now, let's say I ran trains for 3 hours per day, for the entire 30 day month - 90 hours total. Multiply the 90 hours by 0.025kW, and you get 2.25 kilowatt-hours. I pay about 11 cents per kilowatt hour (including all kinds of environmental fees), so running my trains for 3 hours per day costs a whopping 25 cents for an entire month (2.25 x 11 cents).

For comparison, my refrigerator uses about 480 kW-h per year, or about 40 kW-h per month. The monthly cost at 11 cents per kW-h is about $4.40.

Thanks, folks. Yeah, I guess I was being a bit extreme or paranoid about this ! Live steam does sound pretty tempting though! (Hornby has actually developed some live-steam locos in 00 scale [similar to HO] but they're very expensive & still use electricity to heat the steam!)

I'll check the bottom of my transformers tonight. I do know that one is made by Railpower & the other by Athearn. And, yes, this is a DC layout.

Hopefully, some of these increases will be overturned -- at least we can hope they will!

In any case, if these increases are still going through (even if they're lower than 16%), there must be some good ways to reduce energy consumption.

On the other hand, it's been a very hot summer here and we've had our A/C cranked up!

Rob

Here's hoping for the winter you have oil heat (buy the number of gallons you used last year for the whole winter heating season in August when the price per gallon is low due to low demand!)

Down here the biggest problem is running the A/C when the temperature outside is 96, the humidity can be cut with a dull #11 Xacto and the Heat Index is 106!

I keep this place at between 79 and 80 degrees and my electric bill last month was $225.74 for a little 1265 square foot house! And there are still the August and September bills (both ususally warmer than July) before the heat starts to taper off in late October!

P5se Camelback Wrote:Down here the biggest problem is running the A/C when the temperature outside is 96, the humidity can be cut with a dull #11 Xacto and the Heat Index is 106!

I hear ya! not to get off-topic, but a good portion of your AC load is removing moisture from the air. That pesky "heat of vaporization" must be overcome in order to cool a humid air mass below it's dew point. You can save some energy by setting your thermostat lower at night when your AC is more efficient, and then raising the thermostat during the day. If your house is well-insulated, the house will take longer to heat up in the morning and your A/C won't have to run as much during the day. When I look at how much of my bill goes to summer AC, almost all other electric usage (such as trains) is negligible.

Well, my electricity bill arrived in the mail yesterday and, to my surprise, it's actually quite low! So I was very happy

Maybe the next one will be worse though -- it should reflect our major A/C use this summer. We've had our A/C running almost constantly during July and August, except for the past few days.

At any rate, I'm still happy that our current bill isn't that bad!

Rob

Rob,I am retired and that means living on a fixed monthly income..The least of my worries is how much it costs to switch cars on my temporary dinning table yard-I can do that I'm a bachelor.. My worry is my central air/heat and the way I keep it on 68 so this fool apartment doesn't become stuffy which in turn aggravates my breathing problem.

Rob,Here's the thing..

What price simple pleasures?


In my 62 years I never found a price tag.

Well, it looks like running trains isn't all that expensive......but......you also have to figure in any and all of the "accessories" on the layout. Lights, switch machines, signals, etc.. Then, room lighting, and any other power consumed by the "room" as in fans, dehumidifiers, music, or sounds, any digital clocks, or "instant-on" like Television, stereo, dvd players etc.. Do you make a pot of coffee, for the operating session?, that adds in also, as does any lights you have to turn on to get to the layout room, like a basement stairway light........and on, and on, and.......
My computer is on a power strip, and gets shut down after use, but I still have many of the common "power thieves" ( anything that has a pilot light that stays on, has a power supply that is drawing amps.....constantly )

Personally, I'm less concerned with all of those little niceties, the little things that make life just a bit more pleasureable (especially since I live alone,) than the bigger things like the A/C that keeps the temperature and humidity down at a level that, as "Brakie" Larry says, makes it easier to breathe; the washer & dryer (especially the dryer,) the stove/oven, the refrigerator, the nebulizer (a compressor) that runs for 20 minutes at a time, 5 or 6 times a day. And then there's that damn oxygen concentrator that runs all night long, helping to insure that I wake up in the morning so I can turn on the nebulizer for the first time of the day! All of those things make living possible ... or more bearable ... or even enjoyable.

I, too, am retired and have a "fixed income." "Cutting back" to me means being conscious of what I'm are doing, not being wasteful ... not having every light in the house on, turning off the light when I leave the room, knowing what I want when I open the refrigerator door as opposed to standing there with the door open, staring blankly in to the fridge's interior like I'm are waiting for something to jump up and yell, "Eat me, eat me!" (like my daughter's boyfriend does) ... or standing at the front door talking to the mail carrier (or the Jehova's Witness trio) with the door standing wide open, letting all the cool air out!

I don't drive the twenty-five miles into the business areas of Fort Myers unless I will have at least two places that I have to go ... three or four is even better. I don't make frivolus trips in my truck ... if it's necessary, I'll go ... if not, I'll put it off until I have several reasons to go driving off down the street.

Frugality is not being "cheap" ... it's being smart ... being conscious of what you are doing ... and not doing!

Just a minor (anal?) addition to all the calculations above. A 200 watt power supply doesn't always use 200 watts. It depends on how many and what type of locos are being run. If the PS is plugged in but no trains are running, the current draw is quite low, just a bit of magnetizing current in the transformer and a small amount of heat lost in the electronics and such. As we add locos to the layout, the amperage increases per loco. The 200 watss is the maximum, not the "all the time" power.

Bbil: (snip) the nebulizer (a compressor) that runs for 20 minutes at a time-
------------------------
I know how that is my runs 20 minutes 3 times a day...

I don't go overboard but,I do cut corners as much as possible.


I don't make unnecessary trips but,don't deprive myself of a hobby shop trip,visit a club,going to a train show or making a special railfan trip..At 62 and in so/so health I am enjoying life by doing the simple things I enjoy doing while I can..The next heart attack or stroke could be my last or I could end up in a nursing home.

First rule of sound finances is "Pay yourself"...gotta give yourself some sense that your labor isn't all for everyone else, even if it's only a couple dollars of electricity and a boxcar kit a month.