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Avid Contributor I
March 5, 2013

Reduce idle consumption energy level (currently around 5W)

Sonos devices on average consume about 5 watts each if idle. Having 5 sonos devices around this means 25 watts on average idle consumption. Over a year this is about (25x24hx365) 219 kwh. In Germany where 1 kwh is about 0,30 Euro Cent this then means about 70 Euro (about 100$) just to maintain an idle system. This is just too much and could easily be reduced. Looking at the environmental aspect this gets even more critical: There are around 2.5 million Sonos devices around. This adds up to 110,000,000 kwh or 110 million kwh.
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121 replies

mgutt
Enthusiast II
February 26, 2015
@Sonos
1.) Please realize a simple energy saving schedule so the system can be send to standby at night after all boxes are muted/paused/stopped.

2.) Or add a simple feature in the controller based on WoL that sends a sleep-command to the bridge so it disconnects all sonos boxes. The next time someone opened the controller it appears a popup "wake up sonos?" and by that the bridge becomes active again. As long the bridge is in sleep mode no Sonos box is able to connect to the bridge. After 2 minutes they should give up and go to sleep for ca 30 minutes trying a re-connect. Additionally they should wake up if I press a hardware button.
Lyricist I
March 6, 2015
I disconnect most units when not used
Does this cause problems when turning it back on?.. I always have to set up the Sonos player each time I turn it back on, which involves plugging it into the router down stairs, which is very time consuming. At the moment I don't use it for this very reason.
mgutt
Enthusiast II
March 6, 2015
I disconnect most units when not used
The only disadvantage of disconnecting a Sonos is that the playlist will be deleted. If you are completely losing the connection this should be a general problem in your setup. I disconnect my Sonos in the home office every day (automatically). In the living room I leave the playbar connected to avoid long boot up times, but all other Sonos (SUB, Play:3) of this 5.1. setup are disconnected at night (automatically). And even this works perfectly. Either the playbar works alone or if the other Sonos come back, it will automatically re-group the setup. Because the playbar stays active every time the playlist is not deleted. But finally I really like to see a playlist staying active after power-off as well.
Lyricist III
June 12, 2015
It's not difficult to put a scheduler in now is it. Please a SONOS for the sake of the environment.... Add one!
kmjy
Prodigy III
June 13, 2015
For people who wire all of their players you can actually reduce the 'low power' (or 'idle') energy consumption by disabling the internal Wi-Fi hardware. For example, rather than 5W on idle it'll be around 3 to 2W instead, just by disabling the Wi-Fi hardware. It may not be much but when looked at in regards to the overall scheme of things it can add up to quite a big bit of power saving.
I've done this myself and used equipment to measure the power draw with and without this hardware enabled.

While this is not officially supported by SONOS it is not something that will damage or hinder the capabilities of your players or system, SONOS just prefer the Wi-Fi aways be on in the off chance that you may decide to go wireless with one or more players.

You can give it a shot: http://vowe.net/archives/013907.html
Turn it up, it's Sonos!
kmjy
Prodigy III
June 13, 2015
This is a significant issue because Sonos and other manufacturers have low-cost options to enable a very low-power standby mode that meet all requirements for home area networking and user experience of a wireless, multi-room home audio system.

(Along with Ed, above) I encourage Sonos and Sonos users to look at Apple TV as an example of an always-ready, WiFi multimedia device that uses less than 1W in standby mode. There's no reason my Sonos Connect should use 5-6 Watts in standby mode (I measured using a Kill-a-Watt power meter. My Play:1 also uses 5-6 Watts after being idle 3 minutes, which is more than the 3.4 Watts published by Sonos) https://www.apple.com/environment/reports/docs/AppleTV_Product_Environmental_Report_2012.pdf

The Median number of rooms in a U.S. home is 4 to 6. Five Sonos devices running 5 Watts for 20hrs/day would use roughly 200 kWh per year. At $0.10/kWh, that's $20 a year. NRDC published a related report on the hidden costs to consumers, public health, and the environment of always-on device architecture, called "Lowering the Cost of Play." http://www.nrdc.org/energy/game-consoles/lowering-the-cost-of-play.asp

Certainly, any given user has a choice whether they care about standby power use. But, when the costs are hidden and the manufacturer fails to make simple choices to be more efficient, we all pay the price by more fossil-fueled power plants running around the clock to fuel "energy-stupid" devices. 

For people who wire all of their players you can actually reduce the 'low power' (or 'idle') energy consumption by disabling the internal Wi-Fi hardware. For example, rather than 5W on idle it'll be around 3 to 2W instead, just by disabling the Wi-Fi hardware. It may not be much but when looked at in regards to the overall scheme of things it can add up to quite a big bit of power saving.
I've done this myself and used equipment to measure the power draw with and without this hardware enabled.

While this is not officially supported by SONOS it is not something that will damage or hinder the capabilities of your players or system, SONOS just prefer the Wi-Fi aways be on in the off chance that you may decide to go wireless with one or more players.

You can give it a shot: http://vowe.net/archives/013907.html
Turn it up, it's Sonos!
mgutt
Enthusiast II
June 13, 2015
For people who wire all of their players you can actually reduce the 'low power' (or 'idle') energy consumption by disabling the internal Wi-Fi hardware. For example, rather than 5W on idle it'll be around 3 to 2W instead, just by disabling the Wi-Fi hardware. It may not be much but when looked at in regards to the overall scheme of things it can add up to quite a big bit of power saving.
I've done this myself and used equipment to measure the power draw with and without this hardware enabled.

While this is not officially supported by SONOS it is not something that will damage or hinder the capabilities of your players or system, SONOS just prefer the Wi-Fi aways be on in the off chance that you may decide to go wireless with one or more players.

You can give it a shot: http://vowe.net/archives/013907.html

Thank you. This is really cool as some of my Sonos are connected through LAN. You said "if all are wired" but I think this should work if only some of them are wired, too?!
Lyricist III
June 13, 2015
For people who wire all of their players you can actually reduce the 'low power' (or 'idle') energy consumption by disabling the internal Wi-Fi hardware. For example, rather than 5W on idle it'll be around 3 to 2W instead, just by disabling the Wi-Fi hardware. It may not be much but when looked at in regards to the overall scheme of things it can add up to quite a big bit of power saving.
I've done this myself and used equipment to measure the power draw with and without this hardware enabled.

While this is not officially supported by SONOS it is not something that will damage or hinder the capabilities of your players or system, SONOS just prefer the Wi-Fi aways be on in the off chance that you may decide to go wireless with one or more players.

You can give it a shot: http://vowe.net/archives/013907.html

Whilst appreciated kmjy and clearly make sense as power is not being used by the receiver /transmitter. Marc and my question is why can't sonos add a simple scheduler? Whereby you choose when to power the system down and when it should come online. Now it could be this is not possible for some reason, but I don't hear sonos saying that, so why can't it be done?
Lyricist III
June 13, 2015
For people who wire all of their players you can actually reduce the 'low power' (or 'idle') energy consumption by disabling the internal Wi-Fi hardware. For example, rather than 5W on idle it'll be around 3 to 2W instead, just by disabling the Wi-Fi hardware. It may not be much but when looked at in regards to the overall scheme of things it can add up to quite a big bit of power saving.
I've done this myself and used equipment to measure the power draw with and without this hardware enabled.

While this is not officially supported by SONOS it is not something that will damage or hinder the capabilities of your players or system, SONOS just prefer the Wi-Fi aways be on in the off chance that you may decide to go wireless with one or more players.

You can give it a shot: http://vowe.net/archives/013907.html

Sonos realy don't care about this. They seem only interested in ways of getting more referral sales from music service provdiers. Nearly all the updates enable you to access another provider. What have they improved recently for those with their own music collection? I hit the track limit a LONG time ago. No updates from Sonos on that either. I stopped recommending Sonos some time ago, now I'm actively discouraging people because of the issues. The idea is still excellent, but they are too interested in the referral income. Possibly, the Sonos needs to keep polling the music providers for Sonos to get paid???
Rant over..
kmjy
Prodigy III
June 14, 2015
For people who wire all of their players you can actually reduce the 'low power' (or 'idle') energy consumption by disabling the internal Wi-Fi hardware. For example, rather than 5W on idle it'll be around 3 to 2W instead, just by disabling the Wi-Fi hardware. It may not be much but when looked at in regards to the overall scheme of things it can add up to quite a big bit of power saving.
I've done this myself and used equipment to measure the power draw with and without this hardware enabled.

While this is not officially supported by SONOS it is not something that will damage or hinder the capabilities of your players or system, SONOS just prefer the Wi-Fi aways be on in the off chance that you may decide to go wireless with one or more players.

You can give it a shot: http://vowe.net/archives/013907.html

Yeah, you can disable only a few players but just make sure for every wireless player you have on your network, you also have that amount of players with Wi-Fi enabled. So if you have 2 wireless and 4 wired, you can disable Wi-Fi hardware on only two of the four wired players. This is because the other two wired players provide the connection to the two wireless players.
Turn it up, it's Sonos!