How To Reduce Raspberry Pi 5, 4 Standby Power Consumption

How-to
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Use less electricity when your Pi is asleep or powered off.

Pi 5 Power
(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

The Raspberry Pi 5 is a powerful board, in terms of processing power and how much it can consume. But did you know that the Raspberry Pi 5 (and the 4 before it) consumes power when in standby mode? 

When powered off and in standby the Raspberry Pi 5 can consume 1.29 Watts of power. It will sit there with the power LED lit and the SoC powered up ready. The reason for this is that some HATs have an issue with the 3v3 rail being powered off, but the 5V, passed through from the USB power supply being active.

What if we could lower our power consumption at standby by 185% with just one line of code? We can do that using a little Linux magic. Reducing the standby power is useful for mobile and battery powered projects. It will help prolong the life of the project and require less frequent battery charges.

Reducing Raspberry Pi 5 Power Consumption

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

This hack is easy, all we need to do is alter a configuration file, reboot and we can enjoy a lower standby power consumption.

1. Open a Terminal and run this command. This will open a nano text editor where we can make changes to the EEPROM.

sudo rpi-eeprom-config --edit

2. Scroll down and change the following line.

POWER_OFF_ON_HALT=0
Change to
POWER_OFF_ON_HALT=1

3. Press CTRL + X, Y and then ENTER to save and exit.

Reboot the Raspberry Pi to write the changes to the EEPROM. When powered off, your Raspberry Pi 5 will now consume much less power in standby. 

Reducing Raspberry Pi 4 Power Consumption

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

On the Raspberry Pi 4 we need to take an additional step to tweak the standby power. That step is to turn off “wake on GPIO.” This line is found in the same config file.

1. Open a Terminal and run this command. This will open a nano text editor where we can make changes to the EEPROM.

sudo rpi-eeprom-config --edit

2. Scroll down and change the following line. If this line is missing, add it.

POWER_OFF_ON_HALT=0
Change to
POWER_OFF_ON_HALT=1

3. Change this line to turn off wake on GPIO.

WAKE_ON_GPIO=0

4. Press CTRL + X, Y and then ENTER to save and exit.

5. Reboot the Raspberry Pi to write the changes to the EEPROM. When powered off, your Raspberry Pi 5 will now consume much less power in standby. 

See more Raspberry Pi How To
Les Pounder
Les Pounder

Les Pounder is an associate editor at Tom's Hardware. He is a creative technologist and for seven years has created projects to educate and inspire minds both young and old. He has worked with the Raspberry Pi Foundation to write and deliver their teacher training program "Picademy".

4 Comments Comment from the forums
  • TheBeastFromOz
    You can't reduce power usage by 185%, the most you can reduce anything by is 100%, which means completely eliminating it. Do they not teach basic maths nowadays?
    Reply
  • seamusdemora
    I wish you'd devote a few lines to explaining **how** the new Pi5 charger works. RPi quotes it as delivering 5V & 5A, but that *seems* unlikely given available wire AWG for USB-C's ability to deliver higher voltages. Is it possible that RPi.com folks are delivering something greater than 5V at the end of their cable & their spec for 5V/5A is what's coming from the onboard PMIC?
    Reply
  • void555
    That's 99%, not 185%.

    Clickbait.
    Reply
  • MWeiss89
    void555 said:
    That's 99%, not 185%.

    Clickbait.
    It's ~96% on RPi 5 and ~93% on RPi 4. I have no idea how they came up with 185%.
    Reply