Reducing Arduino Power Consumption
Alex the Giant 
Lowering the Voltage
One of the easiest ways to reduce current is to lower the voltage you give to the Arduino. Just by reducing the voltage from 5V to 3.3V, the current drops from ~4mA, down to ~1mA!
Reducing the voltage, does have a catch though. Reducing the system voltage too much, without reducing clock speed, could make the microcontroller start to behave strangely. The RedBoard, Uno, and 5V Pro Mini all use a 16MHz crystal. Looking at the datasheet for the 328P, we can see that at 3.3V, the recommended maximum frequency is around 13MHz. The relationship between clock speed and system voltage is the reason our 3.3V Pro Mini uses a 8MHz clock instead of 16MHz.
Below I've created a graph that shows how just by reducing the voltage, you can significantly reduce the power consumption of your Arduino. For my test, I uploaded a blank sketch onto the 328P running at 1MHz.
