raspberry-pi power consumption - optimize it with a battery/Photovoltaic supply

[dhubs]

Good day dear friends, hello dear all at the forum,


here a question regarding the raspberry-pi power consumption - and optimize it with a battery/Photovoltaic supply!
I plan to use a Raspberry PI 4b powered by battery and hopefully.

use case i want to run a little weather-station outdoor: and it should send dataset each day.

some musings regarding the powerconsumption: well i think that i need to recharge the battery every few days and that is impractical.

Questrion: can you help me to find out more data - how to set up all - and how to take care that power consumption is under control.

the power-consumption: to get a overview - i can look at the datasheet. but the question is: how to learn more about the real power consumptoin:
that said: is it a good idea to monitor in real-time the power consumption of a RPi. Well, I know this can be done with a multimeter in ammeter mode in series, besides this method, I thought maybe there is even a easier method, directly from command-line?

the RPi by the way - has alot of electronic features, so maybe it has (allready) various sensors, including one for the electric current in Amperes? can we use this!?

Look forward to hear from you

[michaelk]

At idle the Pi 4B draws around 3.4 watts and under load 7.6 watts as reported by Tom's Hardware website. Those seem to be decent numbers and I assume this is without any USB drives. If you disable Bluetooth you would save a bit more. Just an estimate of an average of 1 amp load. You would need a solar panel setup to deliver that plus whatever is required to charge say at least a 20 amp/hour 12VDC lithium battery for running at night or cloudy days. The 5 volt regulator will consume power itself. Just some rough numbers.

A Pi zero W would require less power and might be a better choice.

[dhubs]

good day dear Michael many thanks for the quick reply.

i am glad that you share your experience and knowledge.

At idle the Pi 4B draws around 3.4 watts and under load 7.6 watts as reported by Tom's Hardware website.

thank you for this hint - ...

Those seem to be decent numbers and I assume this is without any USB drives. If you disable Bluetooth you would save a bit more. Just an estimate of an average of 1 amp load. You would need a solar panel setup to deliver that plus whatever is required to charge say at least a 20 amp/hour 12VDC lithium battery for running at night or cloudy days. The 5 volt regulator will consume power itself. Just some rough numbers.

your estimation of an average of 1 amp load seems to be a good number. Thank you i will take this into account. now i see much clearer...

A Pi zero W would require less power and might be a better choice.

yup - thanks alot....

have a great day