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My searching efforts have failed when trying to find this. On average, how much energy does the Raspberry Pi consume in 24 hours (minimal usage vs. max usage in a day and USB vs. Micro-USB powered)?

Greenonline
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Zero
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    You are interested in the wattage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watt If you look around you'll find various figures, eg: http://www.kaibader.de/my-new-raspberry-pi/ claims 3-3.5 W for a model B. – goldilocks Feb 19 '13 at 23:57
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    Related (Pi Zero W): http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/q/63519/19949 – Ghanima Mar 18 '17 at 12:46

3 Answers3

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My research began with the original thread on the Raspi forums: http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=6050&p=291334&hilit=watts+power#p291334

To summarize what we've learned there, the total consumption of a Raspberry Pi is probably not more than:

6 W * 24 h = 144 Wh (I guess that's 518 kJ) (note this is an energy value, not a power)

and almost certainly more than 10% of that if you can get the power down to 0.4 W.

Compared to a PC, even a tiny PC like Intel's Compute Stick, these are very small amounts of energy. On the other hand, compared to a dedicated low-power platform like a microcontroller board based on an ARM Cortex-M0, the Pi consumes power like a drunken sailor and, note, has no real sleep modes. It has no real shutdown mode either, for that matter. [0]

The high usage figure is reasonable for a Raspberry Pi 2 Model B, or an original Raspberry Pi model B. The model A+ and Pi Zero consume the least power.

Even at relatively high electricity prices you are looking at < $0.02 per day of running the box.

Note, power consumption has been changing (for the better) with improvements in the software, because it's possible for the OS to power down some blocks of the machine when they are idle or perhaps if explicitly turned off.

Updated:
Following the release of the model 4 B, according to measurements by the awesome Alex Eames
and the incomparable Jeff Geerling [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]

B  with keyboard                              = 1.89 W -> daily 45   Wh [8]
B+ with keyboard                              = 1.21 W -> daily 29   Wh  
B+ with LAN/USB chip off (no i/o except GPIO) = 0.76 W -> daily 18.2 Wh  
B+ shut down                                  = 0.26 W -> daily 6.2  Wh  
A  idle                                       = 0.7  W -> daily 17   Wh 
A+ idle                                       = 0.52 W -> daily 12.5 Wh 
Pi2 B at idle                                 = 1.15 W -> daily 28   Wh
Pi Zero at idle                               = 0.51 W -> daily 12.2 Wh
Pi3 B at idle                                 = 1.15 W -> daily 28   Wh
Pi3 B at 100% * 4 CPUs                        = 3.6  W -> daily 86   Wh
Pi4 B turned off                              = 0.34 W -> daily 8.2  Wh 
Pi4 B at idle                                 = 2.85 W -> daily 68.4 Wh
Pi4 B at 100% * 4 CPUs                        = 6.4 W  -> daily 154  Wh

The Zero, A+ and B+ really offer huge improvements in the power circuitry. Wow!

Note that the Pi 2 Model B is a 4-core machine with each core idling near 0 and maxing near 0.25 W power demand.

Also please realize that although it's very little power, if you are buying a solar panel, battery, charge regulator, etc. just to run the pi, you are spending a lot more on power hardware than you are spending on computing.

Enjoy!

[0] On shutdown, the ARM CPU will halt but the GPU, which also has a real power draw, is still spinning.

[1] http://raspi.tv/2014/how-much-less-power-does-the-raspberry-pi-b-use-than-the-old-model-b

[2] http://raspi.tv/2014/raspberry-pi-a-how-much-power-does-it-need

[3] http://raspi.tv/2015/raspberry-pi2-power-and-performance-measurement

[4] http://raspi.tv/2015/raspberry-pi-zero-power-measurements

[5] http://raspi.tv/2016/how-much-power-does-raspberry-pi3b-use-how-fast-is-it-compared-to-pi2b

[6] https://raspi.tv/2019/how-much-power-does-the-pi4b-use-power-measurements

[7] https://www.pidramble.com/wiki/benchmarks/power-consumption

[8] For comparison, a reasonable battery bank with 5 V output, similar in size to a lipstick case, contains a little over 11 Wh (3.2 Ah * 3.7V) and a 12 V car battery stores a total energy, fully charged, of about 1000 Wh.

[9] echo 0x0 > /sys/devices/platform/soc/20980000.usb/buspower

[10] /opt/vc/bin/tvservice -off

Tai Viinikka
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I am running a Raspberry Pi2 with a 2TB Western Digital element hard disk mounted as root disk (apm set to 254 - effectively disabling standby) via a Y-connector.

Using a USB VA meter (eBay link - LCD USB Charger Current Voltage Detector Tester Monitor Meter For Phone Tablet) I measured (with both the USB HDD and Raspberry Pi2) 5V and about 0.7A.

Measured separately from the hard disk and Raspberry Pi2 each uses about 50% of this power, but that the measurement may not be accurate because of the common USB 5V source.

In any case, this means 3.5W and running 24/7 it gives about 31 kWh of energy per year. The highest rate for electricity is about 15 cents per kWh. So the cost of running my Pi2 server + 2TB HDD is about $5 per year.

Raghav Dinesh
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Charlie Jui
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Power Consumption Benchmarks

  • The instrument used to measure power consumption with the Dramble and individual Raspberry Pis: PowerJive USB Power Meter
  • In all measurement cases, nothing is plugged into USB ports (unless otherwise noted).

The measurement was performed using inline USB voltage tester, which consumes power for measuring and hence there may be a slight offset in measured values. Although it's a tiny amount of deviation.

Raspberry Pi 3 B+ Baseline

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Pi State                                        Power Consumption(PerHour/PerDay/PerYear)
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Idle                                            350 mA (1.9W/45.6Wh/16,644Wh)
ab -n 100 -c 10 (uncached)                      950 mA (5.0W/120.0Wh/43,800Wh)
400% CPU load (stress --cpu 4)                  980 mA (5.1W/122.4Wh/44,676Wh)
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Raspberry Pi 3 B Baseline

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Pi State                                        Power Consumption(PerHour/PerDay/PerYear)
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Idle                                            260 mA (1.4W/33.6Wh/12,264Wh)
ab -n 100 -c 10 (uncached)                      480 mA (2.4W/57.6Wh/21,024Wh)
400% CPU load (stress --cpu 4)                  730 mA (3.7W/88.8Wh/32,412Wh)
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Raspberry Pi 2 B Baseline

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Pi State                                        Power Consumption(PerHour/PerDay/PerYear)
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Idle                                            220 mA (1.1W/26.4Wh/9,636Wh)
ab -n 100 -c 10 (uncached)                      450 mA (~2.3W/~55.2Wh/~14,628Wh)
400% CPU load (stress --cpu 4)                  400 mA (~2.1W/~50.4Wh/~18,396Wh)
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Raspberry Pi 2 B with external USB 3.0 SSD

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Pi State                                        Power Consumption(PerHour/PerDay/PerYear)
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Powering on, 1x USB 64GB SSD                    900-1400 mA (~4.5W/~108Wh/~39,420Wh)
Idle, 1x USB 64GB SSD                           960 mA (~4.8W/~115.2Wh/~42,048Wh)
ab -n 100 -c 10 (uncached), 1x USB 64GB SSD     1100 mA (~5.5W/~132Wh/~48,180Wh)
400% CPU load, 1x USB 64GB SSD                  1250 mA (~6.25W/~148.8Wh/~54,312Wh)
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Other Raspberry Pi models
For the below power tests, stock Rasbpian Lite was installed, and the measurement was taken after the Pi had been running idle for 1 minute, with nothing connected except onboard or USB WiFi as noted.

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Pi State    Pi State                        Power Consumption(PerHour/PerDay/PerYear)
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model 3 B+  HDMI off, LEDs off                  350 mA (1.7W/40.8Wh/14,892Wh)
model 3 B+  HDMI off, LEDs off, onboard WiFi    400 mA (2.0W/48Wh/17520Wh)
model 3 B   HDMI off, LEDs off                  230 mA (1.2W/28.8Wh/10,512Wh)
model 3 B   HDMI off, LEDs off, onboard WiFi    250 mA (1.2W/28.8Wh/10,512Wh)
model 2 B   HDMI off, LEDs off                  200 mA (1.0W/24Wh/8,760WH)
model 2 B   HDMI off, LEDs off, USB WiFi        240 mA (1.2W/24Wh/10,512Wh)
Zero        HDMI off, LED off                   80 mA (0.4W/9.6Wh/3504Wh)
Zero        HDMI off, LED off, USB WiFi         120 mA (0.7W/16.8Wh/6,132Wh)
B+          HDMI off, LEDs off                  180 mA (0.9W/21.6Wh/7884Wh)
B+          HDMI off, LEDs off, USB WiFi        220 mA (1.1W/26.4Wh/9,636Wh)
A+          HDMI off, LEDs off                  80 mA (0.4W/9.6Wh/3,504)
A+          HDMI off, LEDs off, USB WiFi        160 mA (0.8W/19.4Wh/7008Wh)
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Also, as a point of reference, when you power off a Raspberry Pi (any model), it typically uses 20-30 mA (0.1W) until you physically disconnect the power.

Source: Raspberry Pi Dramble

Raghav Dinesh
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  • I think that the tables should also be blockquoted as they are copied verbatim from the link, although that may affect the clarity, and readability, of the results – Greenonline Jun 06 '18 at 15:17