[OT} Electricity usage

The TV set is unlikely to take more than a couple of watts when "Switched off using the remote control" (we still run an old Panasonic CRT telly which draws only a couple of watts in that state). The 'standby' consumption of a lot of STBs can be virtually unchanged from its active state and you could be taliking of a figure of from 10 to

25 watt standby with perhaps just another 2 to 5 watts when active.

If your wallwart phone chargers are of the lightweight smpsu type, You can forget about them. Their standby not charging consumption is typically a 1/4 watt or less for any such chargers sold during the past half decade or so.

If you buy a plug in 'energy monitor' you can test this for yourself anyway (although most digital monitors struggle to show a valid reading for loads less than half a watt - you can plug a whole bunch into an extension lead and test them four or 6 at a time (if you have that many!) to get a more accurate assessment).

A plug in energy monitor will give you a chance to check the weekly total consumption of things like fridges / freezers (any white goods items that are run on an intermittent weekly basis). That should give you a good idea of which items are true 'energy hogs' worthy of replacement with more efficient models and which ones to leave well alone on account of their very low consumption (i.e. don't waste your own energy and wear and tear on the socket switch for things like permanently plugged in phone chargers if, at best, it's only going to shave 25 pence off the annual electricity bill per such charger.

Prioritise: make sure there isn't a 'phantom load', make sure the meter's not over-reading, then deal with your energy hogs (remember to 'fry the biggest fish first before considering the tiddlers :-)

HTH & HAND

Reply to
Johny B Good
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In message , Johny B Good writes

Lots of good advice and a reality check. Thank you.

Reply to
News

Get a energy monitor The sensor just clips onto your incoming feed wire.

Link to a meter on Amazon Uk site

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They tend to be really useful for a couple of days while you discover which appliances are taking the power. I have mine next to my TV and glance at it last thing at night to see if anything power hungry has been left on.

If you are thinking of buying one you can usually find the manual on-line first.

Reply to
alan_m

I've just been sent one from EON for another location but it's been very interesting looking at the power consumed here some of which is used in an office outside and workshop and the house but there is an odd 17 watts there with everything tuned off apart from a lighting circuit and everything is switched off on that too. But still the 17 watt load!

However if you switch the main incomer off then the reading on the unit does drop to zero.

Interesting to see just how much all that IT and phone PC and the other bits and bobs take up;!. Theres gonna be a cull of power consuming devices left on all 24 hours here before long:)..

Reply to
tony sayer

In article , tony sayer writes

Please don't, walk out re-climb some aerial, go for a a drive, a walk, anything but please don't lose any sleep over those 17W ;-/

Reply to
fred

9,000 IIRC, I wish our E7 use is 13,000/year plus 2500/year peak.

Only 120 days? One of the NS heaters was turned back on on the 5th Aug, they were turned off on the 3rd June. So that's 300 ish days on.

Winter has a NS heater load of 8kW for 5 hours or more per night, cold and windy and daily use will be 80 kWhr... Peak demand is 12 kW for about an hour as the HW tank heats up. (3kW immersion, 1 kw base load, 8 kW NS heating). Yes the meter tails do get warm...

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

In article , fred scribeth thus

It wasn't particularly that odd amount, I was more interested and curious as to -what- was pulling that!.

As to the rest thats in train, as it were:)..

Reply to
tony sayer

... this isn't so easy for appliances that are built-in

It's a few years since I last tried to work out what causes base load here. The puzzles are

- central heating system: the boiler unit has a segment timer on the front driven by an internal electric motor; it's normally bypassed but still driven. There's an external electronic programmer as well; sometimes I have the latter turn heating on for some hours but have the segment timer in use too so that the heating is on, say, for every third 15 minute period over those hours. The boiler also of course has its main PCB and - when heating is on - the pumps. I don't imagine it uses much, but it's on all the time...

Its supply is via a fused spur unit.

- alarm system - half a dozen PIRs, 2 smoke detectors, 2 control panel/keypads with illuminated displays, active siren boxes on two sides of the house with tell-tale LED flashes... all on a wired system.

And, like the boiler, no simple way to intercept the mains supply to measure it. I have wondered if anyone makes a plug that one could use on a flying lead to insert into the spur's fuse holder to break out a connection?

- halogen hob; it's connected via T&E to a kitchen oven supply; if I bought the sort of energy monitor that's meant to be clipped to meter tails could I get a reading by clipping that around the T&E?

- ovens ... timer is on all the time; surely this uses hardly any power, but it's quite old technology so maybe it wastes more than I'd expect. ISTR the supply is from a 13A socket but it's hidden behind kitchen units.

- PIR-controlled outside light, permanently wired into a lighting circuit... though there's an isolator switch... Can one use the sort of plug-in energy monitor that's meant to be plugged into a 13 A socket to measure power used by a light - there must be a L & N running through the isolator to the light so presumably I could divert them to a 13A socket, plug in the monitor & connect flex from a 13A plug to the outward part of the light's supply?

- bell transformer, meant to be illuminating a bell-push, but I think the bulb's blown... so presumably the transformer uses nothing at all, or a negligible amount?

Reply to
Jeremy Nicoll - news posts

Have you left the loft light on? Have you got a TV distribution amp wired to your lighting circuit in the loft?

The accuracy of measurement is probably not specified for a reading that low so 17W may just be the figure it gives if it sees just a mains voltage with near zero current. I doubt if it is much better than +/-5% at 1KW.

Reply to
alan_m

If there's any one thing drawing excess standby power, you'd expect to see an abnormally elevated temperature in the case of compact items such as wall warts and dimmer switches. It might be worth using a cheap IR thermometer to sniff out the suspects.

Reply to
Johny B Good

All that could be said about that, assuming an actual rms voltage of

240v (as opposed to the 'notional' 230v rms ac value) is it corresponds to a KVA value of 1.457 which, for a unity power factor, works out at just under 1 1/2 units of electricity consumed in one hour. If the power factor is less than unity, say 67%, this would represent just under 1 unit.

A 'Unit' of electricity is actually a quantity of energy expressed as a KiloWatt Hour (KWH). A single unit of electrical consumption registered by the supplier's meter could be the result of 250W for 4 hours, 500W for 2 hours, 1KW for i hou, 2KW for half an hour or 3KW for 20 minutes. A unit is simply the product of wattage and time based on the KW and Hour units.

For purely resistive loads like tungsten filament lamps, steam irons, toasters, electric kettles and electric ovens without fan assist, the power consumed is the simple product of the rms voltage and current measurements taken by independant meters. It gets a little more involved once you introduce reactive components (the inductor used in an old fashioned fluorescent light fitting as a ballast to limit the discharge current of the tube which for fittings rated above the 20W minimum allowed to omit the PFC capacitor entirely are only partially corrected by the Power Factor Correction capacitor, usually to a 90% PF value from an uncorrect PF figure of 50% or less.

You might want to take a look at the wiki article on Power Factor if you hanker after more detail.

Reply to
Johny B Good

Maplin sell that model (L61AQ) for a quid more. However, they're still selling the equally as good N67FU monitor for £9.99

A quick look at CPC reveals the energenie (PL13062) for £10.05 +VAT (£12.06), unfortunately as per usual, no great detail on its specifications.

As it happens, I own an L61AQ (Europeanised Kill-A-Watt) along with a couple of the N67FU meters which all, according to my trusty Metrawatt analogue watt meter are pretty accurately calibrated for most loads in the 1 to 3750 and 3120W upper limit ranges considering the limitations of digital metering.

I've just noticed that Maplin still erroneously list the power consumption of the L61AQ as 20W (10W for the yank version) rather than the more correct figure of 20VA on the Amazon site (the actual consumption being in the region of half a watt for both types).

Reply to
Johny B Good

A look at pages 10 and 11 of the user guide shows an accuracy of

+/-5% (ok, fair enough but) +/- 10W on a wattage range of 0 to 4416 watts?

Is it really limited to only being able to measure to within plus or minus 10 watts?

Reply to
Johny B Good

Back to basics. Before I start trying to see what is using too much power, what would you expect ordinary consumption to be, during the day at this time of year?

No heating, cooking, washing machine, dishwasher, kettle etc. Just ordinary stuff like various wall warts, a PC or two, perhaps a light or two on, fridges/freezers running etc. In other words, what would you reasonably expect an energy monitor to show, in the middle of a reasonably warm, bright day?

Reply to
News

Mine is under 150W

Biggest variable is the fridge/freezer, mine tends to kick in on a 2:1 duty cycle.

Reply to
Andy Burns

Having only installed my monitor yesterday, I have little history, but, each time I glance at it, the figure is 4-500W.

Reply to
News

That's around our 'background' consumption but our annual consumption is ~6000 units so it looks as though you have something that you (or the shop!?) regularly(?) turn on for long periods with a fairly high consumption or for shorter, but significant periods, with very high consumption.

Reply to
F

TBH, I haven't bothered to check the absolute accuracy. I got it so that I could have an estimate of the consumption for various electrical items. I really am not that concerned whether an appliance consumes 100W or 110W as that 10W is not going to bankrupt me. YMMV

Reply to
Richard

Ours is 300W as I type. Two desktops on, displays, router, printer on standby, telly/stereo on standby, signal booster in the loft, a couple of shaver sockets live, FF and freezer. Charger for the Dyson but that's always cold. One PIR.

Reply to
Tim Streater

750 W on our monitor ATM. That is about normal. 11 CFLs and 1 5' florry, two PC and monitors, associated modems, switches, server, NAS's, VOIP kit, CH controls (two RF stats, two programmers).

If you get a monitor that has a data out you can produce things like this:

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Reply to
Dave Liquorice

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