Sitting at an idle Gnome desktop, this thing sucks up 153W of power. I was almost scared to push it. But I did anyway.
Pulling Linus' latest git tree into my local tree sucked up 216W of power at its peak.
Just when I thought I'd seen it all, a -j4 kernel compile of that same tree pulled 258W.
I no longer leave this box on 24/7.
Via Robot Wisdom [1], “Fun with power [2]”
Dave [3] used the Kill-a-Watt [4] to measure the power consumption of his equipment. I think it's something we could use at Casa New Jersey, since our power bills are a bit high (then again, we do use Lake Worth Utilities [5], which charges more than FPL (Florida Power and Light) [6]).
[1] http://www.robotwisdom.com/
[2] http://www.livejournal.com/users/kernelslacker/30873.html
[3] http://www.livejournal.com/users/kernelslacker/
[4] http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/7657/