How much power does a rig use

[OldskoolPirate]

As above, sounds like a daft question and I reckon the answer is staring me in the face but, how many watts per hour would a 50w rig use ?

Is radiated watts different to kWh watts ? That’s why I ask. Thanks

[McDonalds]

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/UK-Plug-in-E ... 2749.l2649

works very well.

[OldskoolPirate]

Yeh I have one of those but no rig to test it with atm.

[yellowbeard]

It's hard to say without knowing the transmitter type. Assuming you don't get a valve transmitter, old transistor types are less efficient than modern ones. As a rough number for a modern 50 Watt rig, 100 Watts is roughly in the ballpark and a good number for multiplying. That's 1 unit of electricity every 10 hours, 2.4 a day, 16.8 a week and 218 on a quarterly electricity bill. On my tariff that's about €40 quid or so onto the electricity bill for 24/7. A desktop computer playing MP3's would use more - and a full studio with a few light bulbs and a bunch of hifi gear would use a lot more.

[Albert H]

We usually assume that a modern rig will be about 70% efficient. A modern 50 Watt rig will consume around 85 - 90 Watts when you take the losses in the PSU into account.

[Electronically]

Albert is right if you have a rig at say 100 watts your probably only pushing out between the 75watt range .reason I know this is because in the good old days I had a transmitter with jump switches on it which was a pain to change frequency for pll locked .this had two fans on one of the chassis size of computer fans .

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

[Albert H]

I've just bench tested a 10 Watt link rig. The consumption for the whole rig, audio processor and stereo coder is almost exactly 20 Watts from the mains. The link receiver and 500 Watt rig to go with it draws just over 920 Watts.

Basically, you can double the RF output power for the consumption (though some rigs may be more efficient - YMMV as the Yanks say!)