How many watts is my system using?

Yeah, leaving my Forte 4a amp and stuff on 24/7 cost me around $10.00 a month... (I no longer leave it on. only because I do not want to be too big a carbon hog...)

Thank you all. I just got a tube amp and noticed that the reading on my conditioner went from 4.9 Which is what my s.s. Amp And system used to 6 amps now that I have a tube amp. I do turn the system off when not in use to keep from going broke.

Maybe this will help with the "time" or "rate" question. The unit you are speaking of, the watt, is a unit of power. Power is energy per unit time. 1 watt is 1 joule per 1 second. So time is "built into" the "watt". That is, the watt is, by definition, a rate. If you are dissipating 1 watt for 1 second you 'use' 1 joule, 1 watt for 2 seconds = 2 joules. The utility company is technically charging you for energy usage. The unit is typically a kW hr - a larger unit than a joule, i.e. 50 KwH = 180000000 joules. Why is any of it important other than the electric bill? Think of energy as heat, that is what the big deal about power really ends up at in electronics.

Mystang - "I'm using 6 amps when my system is playing music" something doesn't add up - If you use class A amp then your supply power is always the same with or without music but if your amp is class AB then your average power is in order of few watts and cannot possibly be 732 watts. Since average power of the music runs in order of few percent of the peak power your amp is likely to be class A (about 50W per channel) or similar wasteful scheme.