Understanding the power consumption of the ESP32 is very important before tackling a project with it.
In any electronics project, power consumption is one of the main parameters that significantly influences the design and execution.
This is even more important in the case of the ESP32, as it is an SoC designed for IoT applications. They often operate continuously, or rely on limited power sources, such as batteries.
The ESP32 is a very powerful SoC, with wireless communication capability. So, at full power, it consumes quite a bit of energy. You can drain any battery in hours.
Therefore, it is essential to understand the factors that affect its power consumption and use effective strategies to optimize it.
Factors Influencing Power Consumption
Operating Modes
The ESP32 offers several operating modes that influence its power consumption.
These modes include:
- Active Mode
- Light Sleep
- Deep Sleep
If you want to know more, check out this post
Clock Frequency
The ESP32 allows adjusting the processor clock frequency to reduce power consumption. By lowering the frequency, the processor executes instructions at a slower rate, which decreases power consumption.
If you want to know more, check out this post
Peripherals and Communications
Power consumption is also influenced by the peripherals and communications used. For example, enabling Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and other peripherals consumes more power than keeping them disabled.
Power Consumption in the ESP32
Let’s look at the standard consumption values of the “conventional” ESP32 (without a version suffix), in different operating modes.
Power Consumption in the ESP32-S3
Here are the standard consumption values of the ESP32-S3 in different operating modes.
The power consumption values we have seen are extracted from official information and refer only to the consumption of the ESP32 itself.
If your ESP32 is mounted on a board, with an LED, a voltage regulator, and who knows how many other things, that is NOT included.
