How to reduce power consumption

Some power consumption reducation ideas (tested on Raspberry Pi 3 Model B; implement at your own risk!):

Disable HDMI:

First, install this library:

$ sudo apt install libraspberrypi-bin

And add the following line near the end of file /etc/rc.local, BUT BEFORE “exit 0”, this will disable HDMI on boot:

/opt/vc/bin/tvservice -o

Estimated savings: ~20mA ie 100mW. This is the single biggest reduction we have found, after hours of reading and Googling. Everything after this seems to give only marginal power consumption reducation results.

Shut off PWR and ACT LEDs:

Add this at end of /boot/config.txt (only worked for us for shutting off green ACT LED):

# Disable the ACT LED.
dtparam=act_led_trigger=none
dtparam=act_led_activelow=off

# Disable the PWR LED.
dtparam=pwr_led_trigger=none
dtparam=pwr_led_activelow=off

Est. savings: ~5 mA per LED

Shut off LAN LEDs:

Download llctl program from raspberrypi.org

$ mkdir llctl; tar -xvf llctl.tgz --directory llctl; cd llctl
$ sudo apt-get install libusb-dev
$ make
$ cp llctl /usr/local/bin/

Finally, add /usr/local/bin/llctl f0 l0 d0 to /etc/rc.local, at the end of the file, and sudo reboot.

More ideas:

Google around, there are plenty of schemes out there for reducing power, some more hair-brained than others.

Have another suggestion? Share it on the Raspberry Shake Forum.