Turning mains power on/off - will it damage my router?

[ColinTaylor]

Turning off Wi-Fi only will save under 10% of total consumed power.

Out of curiosity I measured the power draw of my RT-AX86U. In normal operation it draws 9.0W. With both radios turned off it's 6.2W.

 

[BreakingDad]

Out of curiosity I measured the power draw of my RT-AX86U. In normal operation it draws 9.0W. With both radios turned off it's 6.2W.

I was going to invoke the wireless scheduler, unfortunately I am concerned about the implications for the smoke alarms. So decided to leave them on.

 

[RMerlin]

I have my router (AX86) and several other devices connected to a powerstrip with a on/off switch built in.
Is it damaging for the electronics to turn the power off to a router (or other electronic devices) without using the on/off button on the router itself?
Does it affect the longevity of a device if i do this daily?

The only thing I would add is, make sure you don't have a USB disk plugged to the router if you are going to frequently power it down. Otherwise, you will need to connect to the router to eject the disk first, to reduce the risks of filesystem corruption.

 

[sfx2000]

Has a UPS been considered?

There's a lot of upside to be had there...

Keeping the router and broadband modem on a UPS keeps things on when the upstream power utility has to deploy rolling blackouts (which is a thing these days here in SoCal even).

 

[Tech9]

Has a UPS been considered?

Power conservation is the goal, not uptime. UPS will waste even more power in conversion heat.

 

[sfx2000]

Power conservation is the goal, not uptime. UPS will waste even more power in conversion heat.

Yeah, but perhaps worth the cost...

One of the issues that have been brought up here in rolling blackout land (SoCal this past week) is healthcare and the internet of things - losing network access could be harmful - keeping the modem and router up is a small cost (along with the addtional trickle charge on the UPS).

Many times, I have had power cut, but if the modem stays up, I can still get broadband access without having to change over to LTE on the mobile handset.

At noted above, the router itself is less than 10 watts with WiFi up, which in the larger scope of things, isn't much.

Going back to OP's question - is it harmful to pull power? - not really, I wouldn't have a USB drive attached, as a hard pull could corrupt files, but if it's just the router and modem, it's low risk..

The concern is if upstream is toggling power up/down - most UPS's condition power to the attached devices, so there's upside with reducing any spikes/surges when the power restored.

 

[dosborne]

It isn't about cost. It's about energy savings country wide. In order to have power for heat, they all need to conserve every tiny bit they can from other devices. It's a lack of supply issue.

A UPS is the exact opposite of what they, as a population, need to do as it increases the overall power load as already !mentioned.

People here in north America have little understanding for the situation Europe is in. The situation could be quite desperate where turning off devices is no enough, pulling wall-warts out (or using power strips) could actually be crucial until alternative energy sources can be acquired.

 

[sfx2000]

People here in north America have little understanding for the situation Europe is in. The situation could be quite desperate where turning off devices is no enough, pulling wall-warts out (or using power strips) could actually be crucial until alternative energy sources can be acquired.

It's not a dire as some make it sound...yes, electricity prices are spiking pretty hard, but at least for my team in Germany (Munich), there's been no requests to unplug their broadband.

Running a kettle to boil up some water for tea is going to use more power in 5 mins than the router will use all day, but nobody is being asked not to boil water...

Commercial users have been asked to scale back usage where possible, that's true, and it's common sense for residential customers to look closely at their usage as well.

The situation is largely market driven, not supply for now - just like petrol prices here in the US, commodity traders are bidding the prices up and trading on fear.

 

[Tech9]

The situation is largely market driven, not supply for now

The situation we are talking about is supply and social responsibility driven.

 

[RMerlin]

A UPS is the exact opposite of what they, as a population, need to do as it increases the overall power load as already !mentioned.

Just throwing an idea here: a battery hooked to solar panels, so you charge it during the day through solar power, and use it at night to power the router. Something from Jackery for example might be interesting.

 

[Tech9]

a battery hooked to solar panels

Denmark is a beautiful country, but surrounded by water and with low % average sunshine hours.

 

[RMerlin]

Denmark is a beautiful country, but surrounded by water and with low % average sunshine hours.

Yeah, I wasn`t sure how far north he was as I didn't remember the details of the first post. Tho he might not need much power to handle just a router and a modem at least during the evening.

I wonder if it will come down to rolling outages in some countries during the winter...

 

[Tech9]

I wasn`t sure how far north he was

It's quite far North, but the climate is milder than what we have here in Canada. We may see -25C in winter and +35C in summer. I've been many times in Copenhagen, including in winter. Summer is perfect for me, 20-25C. In January it's few degreed below 0. I used to live in Montreal and... I remember.

 

[sfx2000]

Just throwing an idea here: a battery hooked to solar panels, so you charge it during the day through solar power, and use it at night to power the router. Something from Jackery for example might be interesting.

And fallback/cutover to an AC outlet - properly sized, the battery would keep things running until non-peak power times if needed...

Doesn't need to have a huge amount of capacity - my router. modem, 8 port ethernet switch, one of my AP's and an RPI take up 18 watts according to my APS...

There's a product idea in there somewhere, just waiting for a kickstarter to make it happen.

 

[RMerlin]

There's a product idea in there somewhere, just waiting for a kickstarter to make it happen.

Tesla's already been there...

 

[Damun]

Thanks for all the replies guys.

My question was to see if turning off devices from a mains switch (wall or powerstrip), is damaging for the devices.
The general idea was to switch off as many devices that have standby power consumption as possible when not in use, e.g when we're at work or during the night.
It would be much more convenient to turn of multiple devices at once from a power-strip or a wall switch.

The general consensus seems to be that it is relatively safe to do so, without severely impacting the lifespan of the devices.

I'd like to save as much power as possible, so that there is power for those who need it. I am a CPAP user and would hate for the electricity to be cut during the night (i am looking into a UPS for that).
I'd also like to save money. For an average home in Denmark, standby power consumption could be as high as 10-15% (400kWh) of the total household consupmtion. With the current prices that translates to approx. 1600 DKR (approx. 200 USD) per year. However, if cycling the power on and off damages or severely shortens the lifespan of electronics, then it wouldn't make much sense.

Once again, thank you all for taking time to reply.

 

[L&LD]

@Damun, those stats you offer are interesting and seem very high to me. What other devices with standby power requirements are you considering turning on/off multiple times daily?

If you're plugging (many) other devices into a power strip along with the router and your other network infrastructure, the chance of doing some damage increases, with each power cycle.

I can't see something as low on the power pole as a router needing to be turned off, even in these extraordinary circumstances. For the total draw on the power grid, it is less than a fraction of a percent and the (real) potential harm outweighs any real-world benefits with the data I can find today.

I understand wanting to do your country good. I don't think it even remotely applies to a router though (which I consider an 'essential' service, as many others here do too). I don't panic if the network fails for a few hours (even with UPS, etc.), but it is not something I would do to myself, even if I was in a situation like you're in today.

 

[Damun]

@Damun, those stats you offer are interesting and seem very high to me. What other devices with standby power requirements are you considering turning on/off multiple times daily?

If you're plugging (many) other devices into a power strip along with the router and your other network infrastructure, the chance of doing some damage increases, with each power cycle.

Several different sites (providers and governmental) report pretty much the same numbers - up to approx. 400kWh/year on standby, which equates to 10-15% of total consumption for an average family living in an apartment. Current price is ca. 4,0 Dkr/kWh (~0,5 USD). I have no idea what the standby consumption is for my household specifically, and i am planning to do a test in near future. I doubt that it is that high.

The prime candidates for pulling the power on are: pc-monitor, pc-speakers, ip-phone (charger+base), printer and desktop-pc, they are all on one powerstrip.
Modem, router, media-bridge, switch and NAS are on a second power strip, and were going to be the last candidates because they need to be turned on in sequence with adequate "boot" time for each and that is going to get annoying doing every day. Other devices that have a standby power consumption and are currently: TV, soundbar, speakers, gaming PC with two monitors, several laptops and my CPAP to name a few.

Here in Denmark it is very common to be as energy-concious as we can, even before the current crisis. We've had a lot of tips from energy-providers on how to save water, on heating and electricity, and i think that most people here are very concious about that. Over the last 5 years our household (4 persons) has reduced the electricity consumption from around 4.500kWh/year to 3.300kWh/year, even if we've got more electric devices like pc's, laptops, ipads and smartphones. It was mainly by switching to power-efficient LEDs, a more efficient dishwasher, new TV and by turning things off when not in use.

 

[Damun]

I just checked with my electricity-provider: The stand-by consumption for our household is approx 0.1kW per hour (i.e. this is the power usage per hour for those hours where nobody is home)
Quick math: 0.1kWh x 24 X 365 = 1051.2kWh/year at current price thats 4.000 DKr/year (~500USD)

 

[RMerlin]

If you are going to look into power saving, I can suggest looking at a few other things if you haven't done so already:

1) Replace any traditional light bulb by a LED bulb.
2) If you use a lot of chargers for mobile devices, maybe look at getting a modern GaN (Gallium Nitride) charger from a manufacturer like Anker. Modern power pack technology are much more efficient these days. This might require some further research however to see if it will actually be worth it for you.
3) I know various devices like computers and even routers support an Eco mode specific to the EU. This is something I have never personally looked into (as I am in Canada), but it might be worth investigating in your case. Might be a good idea then to enable these options in computer BIOSes.