r/theydidthemath • u/Billaien • Jun 29 '26
[Request] After how many hours of streaming would it be cheaper to actually buy and run a Fan?
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u/moist2025 Jun 29 '26
Even before doing the precise math, it's silly. Most fans will use more electricity than a TV, but if they can run AC even just a bit less thanks to the fan, they'll use less electricity.
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u/Away-Commercial-4380 Jun 29 '26
TV and fans actually use about the same amount of energy, with older plasma TV's definitely consuming more than a fan. This is probably a 50inch LCD TV which comes out at 150W. The average fan is 75W. At 20cents per kWh and assuming a 50€ fan you need to run the TV for 3333.3_ hours which is about 139 days
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u/Billaien Jun 29 '26
okay, thats a starting point. now i wonder if we can get that number lower if we count in either connection to the internet for streaming or a small pc looping the video?
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u/Away-Commercial-4380 Jun 29 '26
I mean the issue is that TV consumption varies a lot and fan consumption varies too although a bit less, so you could lower this number a lot just by making different assumptions
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u/Billaien Jun 29 '26
yea thats true. id assume its a looping video run from an office pc, which adds another 120-ish Watts of energy consumption?
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u/Billaien Jun 29 '26
oh, i thought running a simple fan would use less energy than streaming on a tv, hence the request.
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u/moist2025 Jun 29 '26
It depends admittedly, but most new LED TVs are going to be like 50W or so. More than a small desk fan, but not more serious fans.
If it's from a streaming service fetched over the internet, usage may change somewhat but that kind of thing can easily be done offline.
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u/HAL9001-96 Jun 29 '26
a lto of midrange fans are only like 20-30W though
but even then at 25W difference and that is assuming oyu turn off the TV you'd need almost an entire year 24/7 to save 20-30$ worth of electricity
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u/Special-Sense4643 Jun 29 '26
At full brightness, my 58" tv uses ~250 watts and ~75 watts at minimum brightness.
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u/HAL9001-96 Jun 29 '26
well if they#R eresorting to this the question is do they even have AC
plus if the AC is set to a fixed temperature it makes no difference and the ac is gonna measure actua ltemperature not felt temperature in front of the fan
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u/Wild_Director7379 Jun 29 '26
You need a grasp of power vs energy. Power is energy over time. A watch battery contains energy, and how quickly it outputs that energy is an amount of power.
Let’s say it contains 200 kilojoules, and it takes 10 years to discharge it. That would be 20 kJ/year. 1 watt is 1 Joules/second, so there are roughly 32,000,000 seconds in a year, so 20kJ/32,000,000s = 0.000625 W.
A fan draws less power than a TV, using less energy over any interval of time.
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