I'm not sure that the good old days were that different. Do you remember building societies reducing interest rates to almost zero on existing accounts whilst introducing new accounts and not automatically switching you, and, until legislation, not telling you until the annual statement was due.
These days utility and insurance companies don't make any pretence that you are treated as some kind of mug if you stay loyal.
I don't have a 'smart' meter, just the old-style rolling digits. I read the meter every morning, and log it in a spreadsheet. By also noting what I had running or turned on during the previous 24 hours, I have a pretty good idea of what uses how much power. I read on here that an electric oven uses a lot of electricity even when just acting as a clock, and does it ever. That stays off unless actually being used. And my new Miele washing machine uses less energy for a wash than the old Hotpoint did, and it doesn't sound like a jet fighter about to take off.
.I read on here that an
No data - so not really commentable-upon.
A good approach is that if the appliance has a lit display when not in use - cut the power when not in use.
Especially for Ovens, though, you may save more electricity by turning down the regulator for the last 5 or so minutes of the cook. Down, not off - keep those fans blowing.
PA
Hmm. Intrinsically seems unlikely. Why should it use any more than any other clock with an illuminated display?
How much do you think yours is using?
Tim
That depends on the age of the oven. Modern ovens generally conform to EU regs and so standby power is <1W so 24W/h day, about 720w/h per month, so even on top rate 30p/month or £3.60 year.
A new oven would be more efficient in standby as well, but of course the cooking costs would probably be no different.
Dave
Unfortunately ours, when power is applied, won't work, until the clock is set. Okay, you don't have to set it to the right time, but you do have to remember to do it (or you find the oven is still cold when you want to put something in it) and it involves a number of button presses to get to the setting mode.
Too "smart" by half!
I still think that my advice is valid.
I was hoping that the OP would give some data to back up his post. Not just what the standby power was - but also how he actually obtained that data.
Not that easy with an oven, eh?
PA
I don't believe , that for modern devices, it is. As my oven is "hard wired" and the wiring is buried, I can't easily directly measure the consumption.
However when I was have some work done on the wiring, I tried to check via the smart meter. Whilst this showed a burst at switch-on after a short blip as it powered up I could not detect any usage.
This is what I would expect, anything made since 2013, with no display must use less than 0.5W in standby mode. For devices with a display and no internet connection this figure is 1W so 24 w/h per day, or less than
1kwh per month.Dave
You criticise my advice - and then hi-jack as your own !!
PA
Not offered advice. 1 Watt is around 30p/month. If you need to reset the clock at each power-on is anyone going to turn it off.
Dave
Easy enough for me - a new battery in my clamp meter, take the front off the cooker switch and put it around the live core.
As is mine, but this thread has prompted me and I now intend to unscrew the front of the wall mounted cooker switch and put my clamp meter on the live feed.
Well, let's see. As my 'meter' is only what the rolling-digit meter in the cupboard reports, fine detail is hard to come by, it is more the noting of trends and interpreting them. But it was noticeable that, as soon as I turned off the oven, the average daily household consumption dropped by one to two units. My spreadsheet calculates the last day's use, and the average of the last week. It is worth noting that the oven itself, a De Dietrich, is well over 15 years old, and maybe even 20 years, so was not designed with economy in mind. I wondered what on earth it could be doing with all that energy that it appeared to be consuming.
In accordance with what the advertisements keep telling us, use of a consumption meter can help with reducing the power used, but I do not want a so-called 'smart' meter, thank you. I have reduced my daily consumption by about 20-25% merely by observing and recording the meter readings.
I also found the reluctance of the oven to work until the clock was set to something, but it is not a great chore to set it 12:01, and use it as a Timer.
With a clamp meter (I have one), you are measuring VA (the fixed volts from the wall, the amperes the meter is reading).
But households are not normally billed on VA, they're billed on W (watts), which is the real component of the power consumption.
An incandescent bulb, the V and I are in phase, and the power factor is 1.0 . Using a clamp meter there, is perfectly valid, since VA used equals W used, and they're the same thing.
When measuring capacitive or inductive loads, the clamp meter gives pessimistic (high) values.
In addition, some measurement devices claim to handle "complex" (non-sinusoidal) current waveforms, when in fact they do a shit job of it. One thing I tried to measure, I knew the watts value would be in the vicinity of 7 or so. My metrology in that case, told me the VA was 100. Off by a huge amount.
The Kill-O-Watt meter I got, that is a breath of fresh air. It doesn't make errors like that. It has two sigma-delta converters running at 500KHz, whereas your average DMM is 1Hz or 2Hz measurement (dual slope integration). With the high speed sampling, much more ambitious maths are possible. The target accuracy (similar to a Smart Meter), is intended to be 1% for one of those.
To approximate an appliance type, without tearing it all apart, you can use a proxy. For example, there is a motorized timer for turning lights on and off when you're away from home. That uses a small motor, and that motor would be similar to the timer motor in the old stoves. Measuring the small brick timer, would give you a ballpark figure for a motorized stove timer.
In electronics, when we don't know what power a chip uses, but it does not have a heatsink glued to it, we use "1 watt" as an estimate. However, as things would have it, sometimes the power circuit that powers the 1 watt chip, wastes more power than the chip does. And that makes it harder to justify any such guesstimate.
Using a clock radio (with the radio off and just the clock running), could be used as a proxy. But if the appliance actually has a processor and firmware, you might be off by several watts.
Putting your microwave on the Kill-O-Watt, and just program the correct time in the clock, and measure it with the clock running, would give a decent estimate of what such digital timers waste. No need to cook a meal or anything, as this is just an attempt to proxy a digital clock and get a representation of the kind of DC power circuits such things use.
Here is my microwave oven, Kill-O-Watt fitted, clock programmed. On the Kill-O-Watt, you punch the W/VA button, to flip the display readout between "watts" and "VA" and make the two readings. The clock is counting the seconds and keeping time, but none of the high power relays are closed.
0.6 watts <=== this is what I'm billed for 1.4 VA <=== this is what the clamp meter would help tell me. The power circuit is not power-factor-corrected. That's what the reading tells me.There are all sorts of vampire loads in a household, and this is hardly the worst. When I shut down the computer and walk away, the network tree uses 17W all day long. It remains running, so my VOIP phone can receive calls. A nuisance, compared to the old POTS phones.
Paul
I wouldn't be surprised for an old oven - a big iron lump transformer and a bad regulator circuit, plus a VFD. I could imagine it taking 5-10W if they're weren't really trying.
Of course, something newer will likely be better designed.
Ours (circa 2000) does that, although there's a way you can link out the entire timer unit and power the oven directly, since nobody uses the clock or timer. I haven't done it but I'm tempted...
(not so much to save power, but when there's a momentary power outage it can be enough to reset the clock and put the oven out of action, and if you didn't notice the outage your next dinner doesn't cook)
Theo
We are not looking for an accurate figure though, just a ballpark one to establish whether the oven's electronics are taking a significant amount of power on standby or not. The VA figure will be good enough for that.
Its not. For appliances with inductive, so a conventional transformer power supply, or capacitive, so a modern switched mode PSU, when the appliance is in standby mode the reading will be many times higher, resulting in false believes you are economising when you are not. Take a look at this thread:-
You will probably get similar readings, but if it was really using more than a couple of watts it would get very hot, and generally they don't.
One reason people gave for avoiding smart meters was that some were not fully correcting for the power factor and were over charging, but the current generation are much better.
Dave
Our non-smart meter is also a "rolling digit" one, The way to measure the standby oven power would be to kill all circuit breakers in the house, check that the meter was stationary over some hours, then reset the cooker's circuit breaker and see what happens.
One of my ovens' illumination is on - except for when the oven door is closed. Clearly, someone thought that that was good idea!
PA
The VA figure on my microwave is horrendous on standby, due to large filtering capacitors (It's an inverter model) Actual consumption is negligible.
Yes, that would be the way to do it. But it would interrupt all other systems that should keep running, (PCs, CCTV, etc) and ICBA to do that when I am confident from my own readings that the oven is a power-waster. I don't use it very often, so it does not hurt to just keep it turned off unless needed. Simple.
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