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eh-TEE-oh-clez |
Between midnight and 0600 (while everyone is asleep) my utility company is reporting that I'm drawing about 500 watts per hour. I'm pretty certain I can shave a few watts off of that. I've got a Kill-a-watt and am going to start measuring the power draw of various idle appliances and electronics for "vampire" loads. Anyone else know how much their house is using while everything is supposed to be off? | ||
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| Ammoholic |
Last time I looked it was around 400 watts. Several computers, charging phones, networking gear (both internal and the radios for both WiFi providers), refrigerator, freezer, etc. Heck, looked just now and the solar system says we’re pulling 400 watts with the dishwasher running and a lot of lights on. I’ll have to check it later when everyone turns in. ETA: missed last night. This morning before the house was stirring it was bouncing between 100 and 200 watts. The outback mate only has granularity down to 0.1 KW.This message has been edited. Last edited by: slosig, | |||
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Member |
That seems ballpark for me. Night lights, clocks, trickle chargers, computers, air filters, etc. even when I’m not “using” anything, the house is still burning about 0.5 kw. Btw, my solar is down. Down to upcoming service visit will be about 2 weeks. I’m burning a good 50kwhr per day with the ac. Net daily burn with solar is about 7 kwhr. "Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it." L.Tolstoy "A government is just a body of people, usually, notably, ungoverned." Shepherd Book | |||
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| That rug really tied the room together.  |
Almost 4000 square feet house , two air conditioner systems, three refrigerators and one deep freezer… my house usually is about 1800-2500 watts at rest. ______________________________________________________ Often times a very small man can cast a very large shadow | |||
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| Member |
I’m afraid to look. We just moved here. 3100 sq ft house. Brand new like 1 month old fridge inside. Several year old fridge in garage. Running 3 brand new TVs all on standby they draw power. My work computer 3 monitors and a laptop. Even when ‘sleeping’ drawing. We keep AC at 75 big run ceiling fans in bedrooms or it’s very hot. Pool pump runs 3 hours a day. Washer and dryer are brand new | |||
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Member |
Educate ME ! How do i find this out . | |||
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Ammoholic |
What's the point? 500w is nothing. 500w x 6hrs = 3kw 3kw x 12¢ = 36¢ 36¢ x 30 days = $10.80 per month Let's say you unplug everything in your house every night before bed, then plug it back in every morning and you cut the draw by half. $5 per month savings won't cover the damage you do to your electrical outlets by constantly plugging and unplugging them. You will pay more in electrician fees to replace outlets than you will save on your electrical bill. Think about the outlet you plug your vacuum, laptop, or cell phone into and how it gets looser over time, to the point that if you slightly shift the plug it looses connection. We all have that outlet (or multiple). I can even tell you where it is. Usually it's a kitchen island outlet, outlet next to recliner, or upstairs hall outlet. Besides increased electrical maintenance costs, what's your time worth? 10 minutes twice a day plugging and unplugging things is 5 days a year worth of time. That's one work week. How much do you get paid a week? Let's say you have a really small house and you can run really fast and you can plug and unplug things in half the time. That's still 2.5 days a year of your life plugging and unplugging. I rather spend that time with my family. Jesse Sic Semper Tyrannis | |||
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Drill Here, Drill Now |
Mine is never “at rest” in mid-June to mid-September. AC is set to 75F and outdoors it rarely ever makes it down to 75 (it didn’t last night). The rest of the year my bill is small enough that I’m relieved. It’s probably been 3-years since I used my kill-a-watt and that was to monitor a new purchase. Ego is the anesthesia that deadens the pain of stupidity DISCLAIMER: These are the author's own personal views and do not represent the views of the author's employer. | |||
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chickenshit |
I chuckled when I read your overnight draws Aeteocles. Here in FL I have AC units running so I can sleep comfortably. (I'd rather not say how many watts...) My house "rests" during work hours. Even during rest I'm 4-5 times what you are pulling. ____________________________ Yes, Para does appreciate humor. | |||
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Member |
I was going to say that 500 watts is nothing given the various vampire loads that you probably have from various electronic appliances including your HVAC system(s), tv’s, fridges, pc’s, cell phone/tablet chargers etc. My lowest utility bill for our 4000 SF home in October and November is about $80 with the highest in July / August being about $190. I can live with that… ------------------ Eddie Our Founding Fathers were men who understood that the right thing is not necessarily the written thing. -kkina | |||
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Member |
I thought the OP went solar. Battery banks have come down in price. You have the threshold for the smallest battery- 500. Tesla batteries are not cheap. An Invertor just died on my solar system. Replaced by the local company yesterday. I asked about a battery bank- he thought the cost was around $13k for a battery. ROI is not there based on Skins numbers. | |||
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I Deal In Lead |
My sentiments exactly. | |||
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| Member |
A bit of an educated guess to how much power used from 12-6, don't stay up that late! Guessing less then 100 watts an hour. Have most of our non essential stuff on switched outlets, wired the house myself. Several years ago installed a KW meter to track usage. Check it a few times through out the month as well as document starting KW's at the beginning of each month. When we first moved in our offgrid home with solar only was concerned about how much power we used from sunset to sunrise. After installing a wind turbine far less concerned about that.  | |||
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Member |
^^^^^^ That’s the same sort of bullshit I hear on PSAs on Public Radio about “clean air”. The “clean air” folks says “If your car idles for more than 10 seconds at traffic intersections, then turn off the engine and re-start”. BULLSHIT!!!! You’ll be replacing starters and alternators continually due to wear-and-tear. --------------------- LGBFJB "Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it." — Mark Twain “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” — H. L. Mencken | |||
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| Thank you Very little  |
Like a few others, in FL, no way the AC unit is going to be turned off at night especially may through October. We go from low average of 51kW a day in the winter to a high of 112kW a day in August, our average average daily use is 81Kw, 500 isn't a nat on a elephants ass... | |||
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Nullus Anxietas |
Looks like 500-600W. Glad you brought this up, Aeteocles. Went to sign-up for on-line access to our account. Site said we already had one. Asked wife. She had no clue. Figured she'd signed up for it at one point, subsequently forgot about it, and misplaced the login credentials. (She now uses a digital keyring.) Nope. Somebody had signed-up for on-line access to our account using a Hotmail email address! I know it wasn't one of us, because neither of us has ever used Hotmail. So got that fixed. Asked the CSR: Is there some advantage a bad actor could realize by having done this? "Not that I know of," she replied. "America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system,,,, but too early to shoot the bastards." -- Claire Wolfe "If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living." -- Seneca the Younger, Roman Stoic philosopher | |||
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| eh-TEE-oh-clez |
Whoa. So they scheduled a visit two weeks out and shut off your solar until the service visit? Was it a regular service visit, or was there something wrong that needed fixing? | |||
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| I Deal In Lead |
And batteries also. The instantaneous current drain at start up is tremendous. I turn off the auto on/off just after I start the engine every day. | |||
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| eh-TEE-oh-clez |
So here's my thinking. If I can shave off 100 watts off of the house's baseline use, that'd be 100 x 24hrs x 364 days, or some 876 kilowatts a year. Power costs some $0.23 here, so a theoretical $200 in savings annually. But yes, I'm on solar now. It's been generating between 45kwh to 53kwh a day, which exceeds our daily average usage on most days (so far we've only gone over on days where daytime temps exceed 90 degrees) and should theoretically exceed our annual usage by a margin of 20%. Part of my plan was to allow more AC use and get an electric or plug-in hybrid car to use up that excess margin. So, yes, at this point the 500watts of vampire draw makes no actual difference to me--but down the road, a 100 watt savings 24/hrs a day equates to 3650 miles driven in something like a Tesla. That's not nothing. | |||
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| Ammoholic |
What are these AC units of which you speak? When it gets warm during the day we open some windows at night. This works great most of the time. Every year or four though there are a couple days to a week were it never does cool off at night on those days, Mrs. slosig does talk about wanting AC… | |||
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