How much does/did it cost to run an arcade machine all day?

[Missile5]

How much does/did it cost to run an arcade machine all day?

I was thinking about this today - what was the cost in electricity to keep the CRT and PCB powered and how many plays would be needed to re-coup that cost each day? Obviously in terms of a rough estimate

For example back when it was the new thing - would an Outrun sit-down hydraulic cab have needed 10 plays each day just to get back the electricity it cost to run it each day?

 

[channel27]

1 kilowatt hour costs £0.27 on the UK's current price cap so if the machine consumed 1kW for 8 hours it'll be £2.16

I keep meaning to stick one of my "smart electricity usage measuring" plugs in between the wall and my machines but haven't got round to it yet.

So the next question is, how many watts does a typical machine consume? It'll probably be hard to get an average power draw across a typical day for a hydraulic cab as they'll use a lot less whilst in attract mode and not moving.

 

[TheDaddy]

Its hard to calculate this to be fair but it we take 12 hours from 9am to 9pm @ 44p Per KW and 2 amps draw (Just a guess as no clue what it realy is !) It would cost approx 25p Per hour so £3.00 for the 12 hours.

This is very very rough !!!

Dave.

P.S for this to be accurate you would need to know what the cabinet was pulling on average & The exact price PER kw. Everyone would be different.

 

[John Bennett]

Initial punt:
29" machine with large-ish PCB.
Monitor = 100W (taken from Hantarex Polo manual)
PCB 5A @ 5V, = 25W (fairly hefty PCB for that, like 3-PCB bootleg).
So 0.125kW.
Electricity at 44p kw hr (from post above, dunno what businesses pay)
8 hours use.
= 44p.

Rough estimate, of course, I realise there's other losses. Obviously if you have large deluxe machines it'll be a bit more, but not by an order of magnitude.

In terms of recouping costs, I think the cost of buying the machines and PCBs is the bigger hit, although I guess if you buy sensibly, you can sell things on without much loss, unless it dies during your ownership.
The Sega Rally in our local arcade made £20 a week. So you'd have to have lots of machines and a theme to draw in punters, otherwise I think a lone arcade machine, even a genuine one might be a money pit.

 

[Fantazia2]

Initial punt:
29" machine with large-ish PCB.
Monitor = 100W (taken from Hantarex Polo manual)
PCB 5A @ 5V, = 25W (fairly hefty PCB for that, like 3-PCB bootleg).
So 0.125kW.
Electricity at 44p kw hr (from post above, dunno what businesses pay)
8 hours use.
= 44p.

Rough estimate, of course, I realise there's other losses. Obviously if you have large deluxe machines it'll be a bit more, but not by an order of magnitude.

In terms of recouping costs, I think the cost of buying the machines and PCBs is the bigger hit, although I guess if you buy sensibly, you can sell things on without much loss, unless it dies during your ownership.
The Sega Rally in our local arcade made £20 a week. So you'd have to have lots of machines and a theme to draw in punters, otherwise I think a lone arcade machine, even a genuine one might be a money pit.

Dont forget to include the fluorescent tubes for the marquee light/s, they can draw quite a bit of power, something like 20W for a 2ft tube, and possible losses from ISO transformers, not sure how efficient they are.

Also not sure how much the power draw will fluctuate between being played and being idle etc.

As mentioned it depends on the cabinet and whats in it, may as well ask how long a piece of string is, you could probably work out the maximum power usage based on the power label on it as most stuff will list a max power rating on the cabinet.

 

[Fantazia2]

Taking your example of Outrun Deluxe the manual states the power as 350W which would/should be the max draw when running, but at idle it will pull a lot less as the motors wont be running etc, and also in use the motors only going to operate when moving the cab.

But based on that if the arcade was open for 12 hours a day and in constant use then that would be roughly 350W at 12 Hours = 4.2kWh

No idea what electric cost back in those days.

 

[John Bennett]

I just kept it rough as there's so much variation between machines for 10p here or there.
But a room full of 29" Candy Cabs was sweltering during a summer evening at Arcade Club

Daytona 2 DLX was a whopping 780W!
1990's stuff was huge.

 

[TheDaddy]

Yeh i went way over but did that as an example really.

Dave.

 

[big10p]

I did measure my 2 JAMMA cabs once, using one of those plug-in meters. Think it was only about 1.5amps or so, to run both.

 

[Missile5]

Very interesting replies - you guys really know your detail! It seems like - taking a general consensus - that maybe an average would be £2.50 per 8 hour shift. So i guess that's 5 plays at 50p each now or maybe back in the day would be 5 plays at 10p each (with lower prices back then all around)

I imagine some machines would lie idle a lot. I remember being in lots of arcades back-in-the-day where certain older machines wouldn't get much play anymore. Those machines would just be eating into the arcade operator's profit margins.

 

[Sbdesign]

wonder what those new motion quad screen F&F machines eat!
But £2 a go!

 

[Stickman]

There was a thread about costs a while back

Are arcades viable given the cost of energy?

I know we need to support local businesses via these difficult times, but that does come at a premium cost to your own family. Anyone bought a round of beer and drinks with crisps for a family of four lately £20 gone. During the epidemic I supported a local farm, the milk was not cheap...

www.ukvac.com

 

[Stickman]

The old machines are not quite as bad as you think I have some smart plugs that show power usage that I keep meaning to take reading from but they’re low. If you have a 3A fuse on a machine that is 240v that’s 720w but it will run at less than that as you would be running the fuse on its limit all the time, I would suggest probably 50% so 360w.
so approx 1/3 of your Kw/h cost.

 

[Flinnster]

I recall a few years back at a meet, the smart meter was brought out and after a full day it was about £9 to run what must have been half a dozen candy cabs and a few drivers. No motion cabs in the mix.
Obviously things have gone up a fair bit now, but from that meet I always had the figure of 'about £1 a day per cab' electric cost.

 

[karlcdoe]

As others have indicated it varies really, I should imagine a space harrier DLX being played constantly with the volume maxed out and the screen turned up nice and bright uses more power than a small crt cocktail cabinet sitting in silently demo mode... However about 1-2 amp per cab and amps x volts = watts so if it draws 100watts constantly for an hour then after ten hours you have used one kilowatt hour (one unit) or something like that. I'd be amused to know how much a bank of original rear projection daytonas with moving seats uses in operation... A suitably rated ammeter might answer your question more accurately on a per cabinet basis if your are that keen. Smartmeter? schmartmeter....

Edit: Atari, etc often specify power usage on their cabs or in the manual though the amp rating in those instances might be misleading if they assumed the mains supply was 120v.