Energy Monitoring.

[F i F]

We've recently got one of these energy monitors, the sort of thing where you clip a sensor round the meter cable and this transmits wirelessly to a meter that shows instant power use and can do various different analyses of power used, cost, CO2 produced (grrrr) and so on. Seemed to be accurate enough based on switching stuff on / off and checking the change in the reading so on to next stage.

We've heard all these exhortations from ecomentalists and warmists that leaving stuff on standby etc etc can waste a lot of power and produce palnt food gas.

Fair enough so we thought we'd get a baseline, didn't change anything just to see what our place was using in daytime with nothing switched on, eg no washing machine, no cooker, just the normal stuff that you don't typically turn off but leave on standby.

So we had, freezer, fridge, central heating, several cordless phone stations, wireless router, clock, one of the TVs and associated guff, video, cinema, wii, sky+ all on standby. The sky+ drive was actually running doing something indeterminate at Murdoch's behest so that would make it worse, and what enormous amount of power were we using?

On average about 100w, less than 1p/hour.

Now I accept that if every house turned stuff off it adds up, so how many households in UK? 24 million is it? So if every household saved 100w that would save all of 2.4MW which in the overall scheme of things is bugger all.

So I'll not be switching much off, so if the planet gets killed, it's my fault. Blame me warmists.

Thanks, bye.

[Simpo Two]

I work on the simple principle that if I turn something off (or down), it uses less power, and if I turn it on (or up) it uses more. Then I get the bill and pay it. Don't need to buy a fancy box to tell me that

[fastfreddy]

100W is very good. We can't get below 1000W, hence my earache gets worse each time the bill arrives...

[LaserTam]

I would interested to know what model you have, because I have been thinking of getting one of those, to show Mrs LT the cost of using the tumble dryer etc.

[F i F]

fastfreddy said:

We can't get below 1000W,

Question from Mrs FiF "wtf have you got on!"


I suspect that wasn't asked in an internet sleazy way, or maybe it was, if it does it for you.

[fastfreddy]

F i F said:

fastfreddy said:

We can't get below 1000W,

Question from Mrs FiF "wtf have you got on!"


I suspect that wasn't asked in an internet sleazy way, or maybe it was, if it does it for you.

t

well, erm, I better not give the obvious reply just now then...

The real answer is, quite a few things once I counted them all up!

In my office, I have >30 mains outlets being used at the moment. I never need the radiator on, even in winter as the equipment generates enough heat to keep the room comfortable!

It's also probably a bit different to your situation as two of us have home offices we work from a lot of the time, so there's a fair bit of kit which is really on just for work. I plan to reorganise the cabling in the offices, then the idea will be to have a 'non-essentials master switch' I can use to power up all the stuff I use for work and turn it all off when I've finished. That will take care of a load of kit which doesn't need to be on standby all the time. I still think we'll be looking at >500W during the night for this house though.

[F i F]

LaserTam said:

I would interested to know what model you have, because I have been thinking of getting one of those, to show Mrs LT the cost of using the tumble dryer etc.

Free one from British Gas, to be tried as freebie to check out the lie of the land before maybe getting one with more features.

Easy to set up, turn the kitchen lights on and the power usage immediately registers 400 watt increase.

Display can be set to show instantaneous Kw/h usage, cost/h or kg co2 /h and on the bottom half of the screen shows the totals for today, last 7 or last 30 days.

There is some target saving thing you can set up, not investigated this.

Biggest problem I had was finding out how much our leccy costs with the millions of tariffs on BG website.

But yes when the tumble dryer went on... 2kw+ constant and then when the washer fired up on top and then the fan oven was cooking the chilli can see why our bill is high.

Fastfreddy thanks for that, I was worried that ours was under reading because 100w isn't much.

[jaybkay]

I have a large shed with an office in the corner - 5m x 3m, used by my son as a computer gaming room - it has it's own electric meter.

When he's on his own he gets through about 12 kWhrs a day. With friends round it goes up to 25kW hrs a day! - just in computer stuff.

As it's term time he's back at university. To run a modem, switch, router and phone equipment is 15w continuous - 350 watts a day.

The house itself is all electric (no gas), the meter shows the power draw. Just checked and it was on 185w. Turned off two televisions on standby, a light, and a printer - now on 135w. It may not seem a lot but that's nearly 1.5kW a day - which is 15% of my daily usage.

Some studies have shown 10% of power is wasted with various things on standby, and it is wastage, nothing useful to show for it.

[russ_a]

Microwave & Vacuum Cleaner surprised me at how much elecrticity they use. Plus the kitchen lights cost me a fortune too!

[VxDuncan]

jaybkay said:

Some studies have shown 10% of power is wasted with various things on standby, and it is wastage, nothing useful to show for it.

This is my big bugbear, that energy isn't wasted. It hasn't disappeared it's just background heating for your house, which, with our climate, isn't a bad thing. Like the old light bulbs, they didn't waste electricity, when there were on throughout those long winter evenings they just provided a bit of extra heat...

(also is Watt hours, not Watts, sorry to be pedantic)

[eliot]

I've just taken delivery of a new meter to replace my existing energy meter. I've replaced it because this new one can be hooked up to the PC and you can perform analysis of the data. http://www.techtoniq.com/products/EnergyStation/
Ironically it does require the PC to be running 24x7 to collect the data - which is a bit daft for an energy saving meter,luckily my pc does run 24x7.

my background draw for the house was 270w on the old meter and about 370 on the new one and as I type this now one is showing 965 and the other is showing 682 - so one of them is clearly wrong! I'm going to have to read the meter over 1 hour to work out which one is telling porkies!

[grumbledoak]

In a way I'd be interested to try one of these out. But, I'm pretty sure it won't tell me anything I don't know, and you cannot guess, already. I'm in a room with a 300W halogen light on at about half so the OH can read her trashy magazine.

And 5000W of electric heaters. On a thermostat. In the winter.


Surely the only thing these meters can tell you is that tumble-dryers are a rotten invention?

[Simpo Two]

grumbledoak said:

Surely the only thing these meters can tell you is that tumble-dryers are a rotten invention?

Bannisters and airing cupboards cost nothing

[eddie1980]

Simpo Two said:

grumbledoak said:

Surely the only thing these meters can tell you is that tumble-dryers are a rotten invention?

Bannisters and airing cupboards cost nothing

You'd be supprised, my wooden bannister rail is listed on the preservation order, I'd not like to be hanging wet clothes over it.

[susanq]

F i F said:

On average about 100w, less than 1p/hour.

1p x 24 x 365 = £87.60. We switch everything off and spend the money on Shell Optimax and go for a blast up the motorway in our 4.5ltr V8.

[SaTTaN]

I got one of these recently http://currentcost.co.uk/

it's quite interesting although I've not had much time to play with the PC/data export side of it

our power consumption in total never goes below 800W, biggest I've seen at one time was 9kW (oven, microwave, kettle, washing machine, dyson etc!)

our kettle sucks nearly 1.8kW when it's on..

the actual house eats about 300W on "idle" without any investigation - as someone else has - my man-shed/office sucks the remaining 500W idle but I do have a fair bit of kit on 24/7 - and it doubles as passive heating as my man-shed is a wood cabin in the garden ( http://geekcabin.wordpress.com - which I must get round to updating)

A good example of someone who takes this stuff seriously and has a taste for the tech http://homecamp.org.uk/2009/09/18/adventures-in-ho...

Edited by SaTTaN on Sunday 14th February 10:53

[HiRich]

F i F said:

On average about 100w, less than 1p/hour.

Does £130 a year sound more appealing?

F i F said:

Now I accept that if every house turned stuff off it adds up, so how many households in UK? 24 million is it? So if every household saved 100w that would save all of 2.4MW which in the overall scheme of things is bugger all.

Does 2.4Gigawatts, and slightly better mathematics, sound more appealing?
In context, 2.4GW, for baseline consumption remember, is more than the maximum capacity of one of Britain's larger coal-fired power stations, or the Aswan Dam.

[hairyben]

I've often pondered that instead of keeping the transformer "hot" in a standby appliance, which is very inefficient, you could simply use a capacitor with enough charge to keep the IR eye active for a few days, after which you'd need to use the main power button again but in practice would be fine for most people. This is a simple low cost idea that could be incorporated in all appliances right away, if anyone in a position to "do" anything gave a crap.

[King Herald]

susanq said:

F i F said:

On average about 100w, less than 1p/hour.

1p x 24 x 365 = £87.60.

Multiply that by the amount of average households in the UK, (20 million-ish ?) and you get the sort of massive figures that raving loony tree hugging lentil weavers rant about.

[grumbledoak]

hairyben said:

I've often pondered ...

One Watt Plan has been going for ages. http://iea.org/subjectqueries/standby.asp

ETA- Our new TV uses far less than 1 Watt on standby according to the manual.

Edited by grumbledoak on Sunday 14th February 17:11