Power Consumption of your Philips Hue System

How much power does my Philips Hue system consume?

 

How much power does my Philips Hue system consume?

This is actually a difficult question to answer. All Hue lights consume power, even when they are off, as they need to keep a link with the Hue bridge. When they are switched on, they consume at maximum the wattage as indicated on the bulbs. Usually around 9.5W, but some models far more. TruHue is able to estimate the total energy consumption of the Philips Hue system by adding everything together, based on the following assumptions:

  • A light which is off, consumes a standby wattage, the amount depends on the model, typically between 0.2 and 0.4 W
  • A light which is on, consumes the standby wattage + % of brightness * (wattage – standby wattage)
  • When a light is on, a brightness setting of 5% is the minimum used for the power consumption calculation
  • The above also applies to the Hue bridge, with an estimated 50% average continuous power consumption

This is a basic estimate, without knowing the exact power consumption (which depends on a combination of factors like brightness, color, temperature, etc.) this is the closest estimate possible. Unfortunately, the Hue bulbs do not measure their own power consumption.

The good thing is, you can tweak the wattage settings yourself by modifying the values of the model id’s in the table:

What about new Hue models?

There are many different Hue lights, and new models arrive frequently, there is no complete and up-to-date model listing available from Philips and it’s partners. However, the internal ModelID number will always be listed in the table and you can add the wattage information for new/unknown models yourself.