The hidden cost of wifi

I just replaced the wifi router for our cable internet. The new one, TP-Link Archer C9, consumes 9W just to provide WIFI and Ethernet (that is, without any devices (hard drives, printers, etc) attached. Seems exorbitant. That's about $22 a year at current southern California electricity prices. This is my measurement using a Kill-a-Watt. Some sources (https://hexus.net/tech/reviews/network/80878-tp-link-archer-c9/?page=5) show it as shockingly (is that a pun) higher, but I think they must have included the power consumption of having something else plugged in. 

The last time I took any measures (https://alantechreview.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-hidden-cost-of-internet-power-cable.html) my old wifi router consumed about 6W. While not an amazing difference, that's still very much a measurable difference in price, saving me about $7 a year, which is enough to push the needle on total ownership. 

Meanwhile a raspberry pi 0w consumes 2-3 watts.  Makes me tempted to use it as my wifi router instead. Although a pi using external usb adapter w/ antenna and Ethernet port might make more sense (such as the 3b+), although no pi is as efficient as the zero. 


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