Im curious why

Hi Evil. I'm a bit surprised that nobody has come forward with a more helpful response on the power requirement question. I suppose it does depend a lot on the device you're thinking of using and what sort of external components you'll need. If the project is mostly for your own personal enjoyment and education then you should go ahead with it anyway.

My design uses an EP2C20F256 device with some external flash and SRAM for program memory (I'm using NIOSII). Apart from that I've got a few A/D converters, digital I/O etc. I tried to estimate the likely power consumption using the Powerplay feature of Quartus, but to be entirely honest it's going to be a bit of a 'finger in the air' approach. I'll let you know how I get on.

In the meantime, good luck in your endeavours.

Sharky