I had just uncovered (literally) my current adapter for my Fluke meter (a female to male cord with banana plugs in the hot lead), and decided to check to see how much power my Astron RS-35M linear power supply was drawing with no load.
I was somewhat surprised to find that it was consuming 38 watts just idling (no 12VDC load). Doesn’t sound like much until you do the math and discover that it amounts to $59.91 worth of electricity over the course of a year (333 KWH at $0.18/KWH in RI).
I have no idea if this is representative of other Astron linear supplies, but that’s not a trivial amount of power for “nothing”, and makes me realize that I really need to make sure it is off when not in use.
Edited: With the K3 powered on and in receive mode, the power consumption increases to 80 watts. I may want to rethink my strategy of leaving the radio on monitoring JT65/JT9 on HF, as that is 700 KWH per year at a cost of $126 annually.
