Slow to wake iMac... caused by change in location?

I'm on a 2013 iMac, though just under a year out of the box, and prior to last week I've never experienced the deep sleep issue upon wake since about 10 years ago when I set it manually on a 2000 titanium powerbook (and quickly removed it). I've found here (KB: Mac computers: Progress bar appears after waking from sleep) that my computer is in the right era, but other discussions here, here, here, and here all lead to varied answers of why and/or how to remove this functionality. The issue as I see it, is why did my computer start to do this only after moving it from my office to my house for 10 days or so.

It was put on a new, decent quality travel surge suppressor strip I used to use for my MBP back when that went everywhere with me. Could the surge suppressor be the reason?

I did have my iMac at home for a few weeks after I bought it to get things set up as I wanted them. I never experienced it it back then, and the software version was more recent than the update in which this change came about.

The only other thing that comes to mind from the article is that it claims that the 4-hour period was not interrupted by my Time Machine drive while at home. Otherwise, it was connecting to services such as backblaze, dropbox, etc throughout the night if the sleeping system allowed. I was under the impression that when it was asleep, the TM drives also were inactive so long as there had been no activity since the last time they had backed up (presumably no more than 60 mins).

Did I just answer my own question? Was it because TM drives were not connected while I was away with it? I'm hoping someone with more knowledge of this can confirm one way or the other. thanks.