Does anyone know how many Watts switches like the Zooz Zen71 consume? I can find plenty of information on what kind of loads it supports, the z-wave specs, etc, but I can't find how many Watts the device itself consumes. With lots of these spread around the house and connected 24/7, I imagine the aggregate wattage is measurable.
I'm guessing somewhere in the 500 mW range, but does anyone have any ideas?
A dimmer switch has losses when it is on due to the triac VI power loss. That is normal with any dimmer switch. So an i/r heat map with the switch on isn't necessarily a problem.
Quiescent losses due to the Zwave and micro-controller power consumption are legitimate concerns but at 1/2W (as other suggest) that is $0.60 of power used per year per switch. So if you have, say, 20 zooz switches then they cost you $12.26 per year. Seems a small price to pay for the value you get in return. I suspect Hubitat draws 10-20x that
The zen71s are being used as scene controllers and have no loads attached. They are configured with their output relays disabled.
The switch they are replacing is just a zwave transmitter product containg no output stage. It is essentially a scene controller as well albeit a much simpler one with a far less capable radio.
My bottom line is that power is always important and its more than just a cost issue.
One way or another, power burn turns into heat and heat is what exponentially ages electronics.
Semiconductors are based on diffusions which move over time depending on thermal inputs. Filter capacitors leak at rates related to the same physics. Both can be discribed using the Arrhenius equation.
Basically product lifetimes approximately halve for every 10C (18f) in temperature increase.
So Hubitat and Zooz are giving us a much more reliable product by sweating the detail of power engineering.