In message , Mark Rawlinson writes
Thanks Mark - a useful list. I'm not sure whether to be reassured or not. Two of us plus a 13 year old who leaves his desktop on 24/7 and runs two average sized monitors, but turns them off at bedtime and whilst at school. I do very occasionally run a fan heater. Printers are usually off when not in use. More testing tomorrow.
Our supplier (EON) gave us a usage meter a couple of years ago -- I've lent it to 2 or 3 people by now. I've tried to get our usage down to "Zero" on the meter by progressively turning things off but the lowest I've ever got so far is about 140W.
I wouldn't worry about stuff being left on stand-by (not with your problems at this stage!). [The push to get people to turn things completely off comes from the EU green aspirations -- i.e. millions of people avoiding stand-by mode adds up to a lot.]
We'll all be very interested to see what you find, Graeme!
John
Hot tubs are for swingers.
In message , Another John writes
So will I :-)
The wiring here is strange. I mentioned that there is a master on/off switch, plus four individually switched fuse boxes. When playing around this morning, I forgot to turn one of them back on, but did not notice until this evening. Four fuses in that box, but for what? They seem to cover the downstairs hall light, and the ceiling lights in the front rooms, upstairs and down, to the left of the front door, but not the rooms on the right. In both of those rooms are various wall sockets, some of which were off, but not all. Most odd. I'll try and remember to photograph 'mission control' tomorrow.
Seems highcompared to what others are saying but we struggle to get below 20 units/day. Life style plays big part we are up and about and "in" (self employed work from home a lot) from 0700 to midnight every day.
I wish ... for ever going round switching off lights in empty rooms.
Snap.
They could easily account for 5 units/day assuming 200 W, could well be higher. My PC runs at about 150 W but it is old (10 years or so).
5' tube, 58 W each... do the maths. Another 1.4 units/day per tube.Snapish.
I keep a close eye on the oil, weekly sight glass reading and extrapolate when it's likely to run out. Prediction not very accurate in the transition to/from winter but reasonable once into winter.
Similar cooling. Have a look in the DW manual and see if it tells you how much it uses per cycle. I'd expect around 2 units.
Hair dryer, at least No.1 Daughters hair dryer seems to take quite a bit... I think hers is rated at 1.8 kW and she can take upwards of 15 mins to dry her hair! Intermittent over that 15 mins. The hover (in our case a DC04) is another possibly surprising consumer, couple of hours hoovering the house and a couple of units used.
Maybe a unit or two per main meal. Hob and induction ring use about a unit to cook the evening meal.
Halogen.
Might be worth getting an enrgy monitor. I have a CurrentCost unit as it squirts the data out in an easy to parse form (XML). I'ts connected to the server which logs the data and enable graphing of it on the local webserver.
You say that like it's a bad thing!
Depends on whether the wife is using it while you're away
Owain
And of course Sod's Law guarantees that's the loft the cannabis farmers have been in ;)
You've obviously got a lot to explore but ISTM you might fairly quickly find your use explains that high total figure. Eg a PC on 24/7 and used several hours a day could easily account for well over 1,000 units.
Prompted by this thread, and most people being out of the house or at least not using much power, I thought it might be interesting to experiment a bit to see if I can see where our background load came from. So I slapped a clamp meter round one of the meter tails, and switched off various bits to see what showed up...
Some interesting bits:
The pond pump and UV clarifier take about an amp (however that's an induction motor, so chances are some of that current is reactive and hence not metered)
My comms cabinet (routers x 2, PABX, Network switch, NAS, external drive, and a homeplug device) takes about 300mA
The smoke alarms and emergency lights pull 30mA
Now an odd one - there are two downstairs lighting circuits. Both had all the lights off, yet between them they draw 400mA. Currently lost for a reason why! (about 250mA on one, and 150mA on the other)
Kitchen 1.25A, mostly cooling I would expect.
Sockets first floor 250mA - mostly standby loads and a laptop charger - possibly a 60W (250mA) PIR controlled lamp that may have triggered on repowering.
Sockets downstairs, 2.84A, of which 1.6A alone is my IT kit in my office (couple of PCs, Laser, Scanner, couple of phones with wall warts, answer machine, 2 x LCD monitors, KVM switch, speakers/amp, mobile charger, print server, and assorted other small appliances)
Indeed. We use a Watchman which, despite a few negative comments here, works rather well. The problem occurs when the roads north of here are blocked (snow) and the tanker cannot get through. Naturally, this is always at times of peak demand.
Right. Progress. Pictures of our fuse boxes here :
Even more progress. Have found the monitor which E.on sent me um, eons ago. One clamp to go around the main supply cable. Will that be the thick red cable to the left of the meter, in the bottom picture?
Door bell transformer? Burglar alarm?
I forgot something significant - halogen lighting. There are 12 50W lights in the kitchen and eight in two bathrooms. If they are all on this is 1.1kW.
M.
In message , John Rumm writes
Interesting. So, if I am reading these figures correctly, that is a total draw of 6.07 amps. What I don't know, is how to convert that to KWph. In other words, if you used exactly 6.07 amps for one hour, how many units of electricity would that be?
try multiplying by 0.24 That comes out at 1.45kWh
Ignoring power factor and assuming nominal 230 voltage
6A * 230V = 1380W 1380W * 1h = 1380Wh = 1.38kWh = 1.38 units
Same here.
Looks a bit like our under-stairs cupboard. :-)
Can you figure out where the supply enters? I guess it then goes to the meter.
Eon sent us one too, when we were with them. Useful to have on the desk next to me.
I bought one of these:
in 2009 - very useful for seeing what juice is going through a particular socket if you want to measure e.g. a fridge/freezer or a telly. It can give you instantaneous measurements and average over some period but doesn't store any data.
P (watts) =VI
E (Energy kWh) = Pt/1000 (P=power in watts, t=time in hours)
So measure your voltage (RMS) or assume 235V (as a happy medium between
240 and 230).Sp 6.07 for one hour =>
P = 6.07*235/1000 P = 1.43kWh rounded
In message , Mark Rawlinson writes
Yes, I keep remembering various things. We have five chandeliers (!) in this house, all of which use traditional candle bulbs. Luckily, we rarely use them, as Wifey prefers various flavours of table lamps, most of which are now fitted with modern low energy bulbs.
This house was a B&B years ago, and various toilets have extractor fans fitted, which come on with the ceiling light, but continue running after the light is switched off. I did try to disconnect one yesterday, but there are too many wires. I disconnected two red ones, but that just made it click, and the motor pulsed so I bottled out, reconnected the two red wires and left it running :-)
I read here a while ago that leaving a shaver plugged in to the bathroom light, as I did, makes the transformer consume power, so now I unplug that daily. Every little helps ...
In message , charles writes
Thank you :-)
In message , Andy Burns writes
Two answers which are probably close enough. Thank you.
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