Power bakeoff · 2026-07-22
Mac render electricity is cents - time and thermals are the constraint.
We sampled SoC package power (CPU + GPU + ANE) with macOS powermetrics during Remotion renders on an M2 Max. Absolute package energy for a 20-minute kinetic composition was about 5.4 Wh (~$0.001 at $0.1883/kWh). Buyer pricing will be set by provider payout and platform take, not household electricity.
Instrument: macOS
Units: SoC package estimates - Apple warns these are for optimization, not cross-device absolute truth. They are still real on-device samples for this laptop.
ABS vs Δ: long-suite idle sample count was 0, so watt-hours below are absolute (include baseline SoC draw). Treat them as an upper bound on incremental energy.
M1 Airs: wall-clock succeeded; package power needs an on-console admin approval and was not captured over SSH.
powermetrics via elevated admin session.Units: SoC package estimates - Apple warns these are for optimization, not cross-device absolute truth. They are still real on-device samples for this laptop.
ABS vs Δ: long-suite idle sample count was 0, so watt-hours below are absolute (include baseline SoC draw). Treat them as an upper bound on incremental energy.
M1 Airs: wall-clock succeeded; package power needs an on-console admin approval and was not captured over SSH.
Short compositions - M2 Max package power
| Phase | Wall | Avg combined | Peak | Energy | Elec @ $0.1883/kWh |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LightMotion | 3.47 s | 18.0 W | 24.7 W | 0.015 Wh | ~$0.0000028 |
| MediumMotion | 5.98 s | 30.5 W | 35.3 W | 0.045 Wh | ~$0.0000084 |
| HeavyMotion | 32.62 s | 33.1 W | 42.0 W | 0.287 Wh | ~$0.000054 |
Long kinetic - absolute package energy
| Job | Wall | Abs avg | Peak | Abs Wh | Elec (ABS) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LongKinetic3m | 111.5 s | 28.6 W | 32.7 W | 0.876 Wh | ~$0.000165 |
| LongKinetic20m | 679.5 s | 28.7 W | 32.7 W | 5.403 Wh | ~$0.00102 |
Product reading
- ~33 W average under HeavyMotion is “efficient but not free.”
- Electricity is rounding error next to any realistic buyer payout.
- The real host constraints are time, thermals, annoyance, and pause controls - which is why RenderMac’s agent heartbeats thermal state and supports pause/drain.