You can look at my NAS numbers. I think 3x is a bit dramatic… initialization of the disk array is fairly intensive, disk-wise, and it just isn’t that much:
As far as live fully populated with 5 drives, formatting the array, 50w - 65w , idle after array built, 43w - 44w . Considering that amount of energy will store a LOT of Chia plots, many many terabytes, that’s where the efficiency comes in!
43w / 5 = 8.6w
65w / 5 = 13w
I’ve used watt meters to actually measure this stuff, so I’m pretty confident in what I’m saying here… but you’re right, 10w is probably a better number than 5w as far as average use… but it’s below that in practice, 8.6w.