What It Costs to Run a Router 24 Hours a Day

Network equipment has a property almost nothing else in the house shares: it runs constantly, 24 hours, never switched off. Hourly consumption is small, but multiplied by 8,760 hours a year it becomes real. This guide shows how to calculate it yourself, gives reference figures for equipment common in homes and small businesses, then weighs up what's actually worth switching off.

The formula, and one common mistake

Annual cost works out like this:

watts x 24 hours x 365 days / 1,000 = kWh per year, multiplied by your electricity tariff per kWh.

At a typical Indonesian household tariff of around Rp1,450 to Rp1,700 per kWh, one watt running all year costs about Rp13,000. That makes things easy: multiply a device's watts by Rp13,000 for a rough annual cost.

The common mistake is using the adapter's rating as consumption. An adapter marked 12V 2A means it can supply 24 watts, not that the router draws 24 watts. Actual use is usually a third to a half of that. To know for certain, a plug-in power meter is cheap and shows watts and accumulated kWh directly.

Reference figures

Estimated real consumption and annual cost at Rp1,500 per kWh:

• ONT or fibre modem: 5 to 8 watts, roughly Rp66,000 to Rp105,000 a year.
• Home dual-band Wi-Fi router: 6 to 12 watts, roughly Rp79,000 to Rp158,000.
• High-end Wi-Fi 6 router with many antennas: 12 to 20 watts, roughly Rp158,000 to Rp263,000.
• Each extra mesh node: 5 to 10 watts per unit. A three-node system means three times this.
• 8-port gigabit switch: 4 to 8 watts, roughly Rp53,000 to Rp105,000.
• PoE access point: 5 to 15 watts, plus around 10 percent lost in the cable and injector. See the PoE guide.
• Wi-Fi CCTV camera: 4 to 8 watts each, and there's usually more than one.
• Small two-bay NAS: 15 to 30 watts idle, far more than anything above. See choosing a NAS.
• Small UPS: 3 to 8 watts for itself.

An ordinary home with an ONT, one router, and two cameras sits around 25 to 35 watts, or roughly Rp330,000 to Rp460,000 a year. That's about the same as leaving one 30-watt LED lamp on all year. A small office with a switch, three access points, a NAS, and several cameras can reach 100 watts, around Rp1.3 million a year, and at that point the calculation belongs in operating costs.

What's worth switching off, and what isn't

Scheduling the router off overnight

Many routers have an on/off schedule, covered in scheduling Wi-Fi on and off. The saving is real but small: turning an 8-watt router off for eight hours a night saves around Rp35,000 a year. Bear in mind some devices do need the network overnight: CCTV, alarms, automatic phone updates, and smartwatches. So this is a choice about habits, not cost.

What really is worth switching off

• Equipment no longer used but still plugged in. An old repeater replaced by mesh, a switch with no ports in use, a spare router still running in a cupboard. This is saving with nothing lost.
• A very inefficient old router. Routers over eight years old sometimes draw more than a much faster replacement. If it's due for replacement anyway, the power saving is a bonus, not the main reason. See when to replace your router.
• A NAS used only occasionally. Schedule disk hibernation or power it on only when needed; this is the biggest saving on the list.

What not to switch off to save money

• The ONT. Repeatedly powering it off shortens its life and, with some providers, triggers a slow re-authentication.
• The UPS. Its small draw is the price of protecting the router and ONT from power flickers, a common cause of routers restarting themselves. See a UPS for your router and routers that keep restarting.
• Security cameras. For obvious reasons.

Power, heat, and equipment life

Almost all the power network equipment uses comes back out as heat, and heat is the main reason routers age faster. A 15-watt router inside a closed cabinet will misbehave more often than the same router on an open shelf. So ventilation isn't only about stability, it's about the lifespan of what you bought. Covered in overheating routers and keeping a router healthy.

For small businesses

Once the network reaches tens of watts, two things are worth considering. First, PoE access points are more efficient than several separate routers each with its own adapter, because one supply serves many points at better efficiency. Second, equipment chosen correctly from the start is cheaper to run than a pile of add-ons. Guides: Wi-Fi for small offices and venue Wi-Fi capacity.

The number to remember

One watt running all year costs about Rp13,000. An ordinary home with ONT, router, and two cameras runs Rp330,000 to Rp460,000 a year. Turning the router off overnight saves only tens of thousands, so do it for habit reasons, not for the bill. Real savings come from unplugging equipment you no longer use and letting a NAS sleep, not from switching off a network that's doing its job.

Frequently asked questions