I’m wondering if anyone here has one of the newer “Energy Star” clothes washers, and a “Kill-a-watt” meter? We recently had one of those freebie energy audits done, and one of the suggestions made was to replace our current ~15 yr old standard washing machine with one of the newer energy star front load machines. Our current machine is a Maytag, nothing fancy, but it works well and has been quite reliable. I threw it on my Kill-A-Watt meter, and it seems to be drawing about 0.2 KWh per load, which doesn’t seem like all that much… We use natural gas for our water heating and dryer, and mostly use the cold or warm cycles, so we aren’t getting hit badly for water and drying costs…
The claim was made that there is a rapid payback in terms of lower water consumption, and less power draw… I am curious about how much less power draw, has anyone actually measured what the power consumption is on a PER LOAD basis? (IMHO this is a far more useful number than some vague KWh/year estimate based on an arbitrary number of loads that might or might not relate to actual use...)
If our present washer was dead, it would make sense to replace it with an Energy Star rated unit, but somehow it’s a lot harder to convince me that it’s worth putting a perfectly good working appliance on the street just to upgrade the energy rating.
Does it seem like a reasonable thing to do, or are we just getting hit with “green doo-doo” and would we be better off spending our money elsewhere?
Also any particular brands / models that folks have had good or bad luck with?
I’ve got a Killawatt, and put it on my old Maytag, and saw 20 watts per use on a single load. It’s not an energy anything. Water usage is where you save the money on the washing machine as the energy star models are supposed to use something like 1/3 of the water of a regular model.
If you want more bang for the electrical buck, replacing a fridge with an energy star should make a difference, the fridge I bought at the same time as my washer uses about 2KWH per day. This is the first appliance I plan to replace.
Plus I needed all new appliances (except a fridge). By replacing the fridge 915 vs 520 I expect to save some coin. Plus my new fridge is super quiet compared to the GE which I just sold.
Well, we’ve now run four loads through our washer while it’s on the Kill-a-watt, and I’m showing .78 KWh consumed - or about .195 KWh / load, which seems to be consistent with the number that Telco got on his old machine.
Looking at the sites that D.N.F pointed me at, there was a little blurb on one saying that they base the numbers in their list of Energy Star models on the basis of doing 392 loads / year. Going to the list of washers, I find that the KWh/year listed per machine varies all over the place, but even the lowest numbers I spotted (about 125) worked out to about .32 KWh / load, with my quick estimate average of 180 KWh/yr giving me about .46 KWh/load - this doesn’t sound that great! Did more digging, and found at the Energy Star Definitions page, that they cook the numbers by including the “estimated electric water heater use” costs - so the number is not useful for my purposes, especially since we do very few loads with hot water, and what hot water we do use is heated by gas.
So I’m back to my original question - does anyone know what the typical Energy Star Washer draws per load, JUST FOR THE WASHER?
BTW, the numbers that I’ve seen suggest that unless your fridge or dishwasher are REALLY old, there isn’t enough savings potential there to justify replacing a working machine… Worth purchasing an Energy Star replacement if the old machine dies, but not doing so just for the energy savings.
I dunno on the fridge. The 18.7 cu ft I’m looking at as a replacement uses 407kwh/year, or 1.115kwh/day. The one the wife wants (larger) uses 448kwh/year, or 1.2kwh/day. My existing one uses like 2.5kwh/day, or 912kwh/year. We pay around 8 cents/KWH, meaning that this fridge would save me either 37 bucks a year for the wife’s preference or 40.40 per year for my preference, but saving almost 1.5KWH in a day means saving the cost of two solar panels, maybe 4 solar panels, and the required batteries and other hardware.
It would not pay off for on grid, but would definitely pay off for an off-grid application, when looking at it as strictly money. Looking at the bigger picture though, if a million people made this switch, it would save 1.5 gigawatts per day. This is more energy than is needed to send Michael J Fox to some other time, since the flux capacitor only requires 1.21 gigawatts. If you combined it with a whole range of Energy Star appliances, paying close attention to the labels and not just the Energy Star sticker, I could see you cutting your non-hardwired electrical usage in half or better. And, also need to keep in mind that water usage counts in the savings, too. Not just heated water, but water in general. The front loader washers claim to use half to a third of the water of a top loader, but if you gotta have a top loader Staber makes a top load horizontal axis job that looks good (not used one directly) and if you really want to save you can even use wood fired hot water to dry the clothes. These options are pricey though, and I have no idea on the reliability of these guys or anything else. Just found them on internet searches. I was looking at experimenting with an old dryer, and a home made solar water heater to see if I can make a hydronic clothes dryer. If it worked, and this link says it should…
Yeah I wouldn’t replace em unless you had to. However, if you do get a new one, a front loader is much easier on your clothes. You can wash all kinds of delicates in them. My wife does dry clean only stuff in the old Miele. Haven’t installed the Bosch yet.
Notice that clothes dryers all suck and can’t get an energy star rating.
I dunno on the fridge. The 18.7 cu ft I’m looking at as a replacement uses 407kwh/year, or 1.115kwh/day. The one the wife wants (larger) uses 448kwh/year, or 1.2kwh/day. My existing one uses like 2.5kwh/day, or 912kwh/year. We pay around 8 cents/KWH, meaning that this fridge would save me either 37 bucks a year for the wife’s preference or 40.40 per year for my preference, but saving almost 1.5KWH in a day means saving the cost of two solar panels, maybe 4 solar panels, and the required batteries and other hardware.
It would not pay off for on grid, but would definitely pay off for an off-grid application, when looking at it as strictly money. Looking at the bigger picture though, if a million people made this switch, it would save 1.5 gigawatts per day. This is more energy than is needed to send Michael J Fox to some other time, since the flux capacitor only requires 1.21 gigawatts. If you combined it with a whole range of Energy Star appliances, paying close attention to the labels and not just the Energy Star sticker, I could see you cutting your non-hardwired electrical usage in half or better. And, also need to keep in mind that water usage counts in the savings, too. Not just heated water, but water in general. The front loader washers claim to use half to a third of the water of a top loader, but if you gotta have a top loader Staber makes a top load horizontal axis job that looks good (not used one directly) and if you really want to save you can even use wood fired hot water to dry the clothes. These options are pricey though, and I have no idea on the reliability of these guys or anything else. Just found them on internet searches. I was looking at experimenting with an old dryer, and a home made solar water heater to see if I can make a hydronic clothes dryer. If it worked, and this link says it should…
I agree on the off grid situation where every watt counts big-time, but even at our rate of 15.4 cents a kWh (including all the extra charges) that is still an awfully long payback if replacing a working appliance when on-grid. I’ve been thinking about grid-tied solar, but according to some preliminary numbers I’ve run using the SolarFinder website a grid tied solar system would run us about $63K for 700 sqft, and have an 11 year payback - IMHO that’s excessive, though if Nano-solar or some of their competitors start to get the price down to a more reasonable level, we might reconsider. A hot water system might be a lot better, as that is only about $4k, with a 7 year payback.
As to what would happen if lots of people made the switch, there is the interesting question that few people raise about what the environmental impact would be of making all the extra appliances and disposing of the old ones, but I’m more interested in what it does for OUR finances… (IMHO the best way to get people to go green is to make it PROFITABLE, and get out of the way of the stampede - but if you can’t, I know I’m going to be a really hard sale to make.)
If I had sizable amounts of money to spare, I would love to do a significant addition on the house, (2-3 rooms, and at least 2-3 more garage bays / workshop spaces) with a heavy emphasis on adding energy savings - I fantasize about getting a wood boiler with a couple thousand gallons of storage, and a large drainback solar aray, use that for all the heating, DHW, hydronic clothes dryer, etc, with a small gas boiler as ultimate backup - and use the solar setup to heat the swimming pool during the non-house heating season.
But our funds are much more limited, so we need to really make sure that any energy reduction spending we do makes economic sense, or it will have an adverse effect on our personal environment…
Yeah I wouldn’t replace em unless you had to. However, if you do get a new one, a front loader is much easier on your clothes. You can wash all kinds of delicates in them. My wife does dry clean only stuff in the old Miele. Haven’t installed the Bosch yet.
Notice that clothes dryers all suck and can’t get an energy star rating.
I agree, and it’s worth noting that nobody I’ve seen suggests swapping out the clothes dryer - closest it gets is some of the “hydronic dryer” suggestions. The energy audit guy that suggested the washer said flat out not to change the dryer. The Energy Star website isn’t quite as explicit, but sort of says the same thing. I don’t really see how it could be significantly different in any case - you have to heat the air and blow it through the clothes, you have to turn the drum, and that’s about all a dryer does… There really aren’t any places that one can pick up any savings without a really radical technology breakthrough.
Most washers only have a 1/2 Hp motor ant the typical cycle is less than 1/2 hr. It really can’t use very much electricity. The savings comes in the energy to heat water. If you multiply out the 40 to 50 gallons of water per cycle, this adds up quickly. However, if you use a good detergent, you don’t need to use hot water. Try cold water and some good detergent for a while and see if you notice a difference. I really haven’t. If you have a real dirty load like greasy overalls, then warm water might be a good idea. The new high efficiency front loaders are Energy Star rated because they use a lot less water and spin faster, wringing more water out of the load. A clothes dryer still has to expend X BTU per load, and nobody has figures out how to do this any more efiiciently, YET!
Retiring old appliances for newer and more efficient appliances strictly for energy savings is probably not a good idea unless the machine is over 10 years old or so. To buy a $1000 refrigerator that may save $50 a year will never pay back before the thing dies, at today’s electric rates. If you are off the grid, you have to realize that you really ARE paying a lot for electricity, as you have to amortize that solar array. Most people living off the grid don’t have 25 CF side by side self defrosting refrigerators. A manual defrost chest freezer in the basement and a small refrigerator in the kitchen is probably the most energy efficient way to go, unless you want to store your beer in a cave…
Most washers only have a 1/2 Hp motor ant the typical cycle is less than 1/2 hr. It really can’t use very much electricity. The savings comes in the energy to heat water. If you multiply out the 40 to 50 gallons of water per cycle, this adds up quickly. However, if you use a good detergent, you don’t need to use hot water. Try cold water and some good detergent for a while and see if you notice a difference. I really haven’t. If you have a real dirty load like greasy overalls, then warm water might be a good idea. The new high efficiency front loaders are Energy Star rated because they use a lot less water and spin faster, wringing more water out of the load. A clothes dryer still has to expend X BTU per load, and nobody has figures out how to do this any more efiiciently, YET!
Retiring old appliances for newer and more efficient appliances strictly for energy savings is probably not a good idea unless the machine is over 10 years old or so. To buy a $1000 refrigerator that may save $50 a year will never pay back before the thing dies, at today’s electric rates. If you are off the grid, you have to realize that you really ARE paying a lot for electricity, as you have to amortize that solar array. Most people living off the grid don’t have 25 CF side by side self defrosting refrigerators. A manual defrost chest freezer in the basement and a small refrigerator in the kitchen is probably the most energy efficient way to go, unless you want to store your beer in a cave…
Chris
I see claims that RUNNING THE WASHER will cost less energy per load. I want to know how much energy it takes to RUN THE WASHER. I am NOT asking about running the water meter, that’s a SEPERATE, albeit related question. I’m NOT asking about running the dryer, again that’s a SEPERATE, albeit related question.
We don’t run many loads with hot water. I think the GF might run a small load of her unmentionables in hot wash / cold rinse once in a while, but mostly she does cold wash, cold rinse. All my clothes I do in warm wash, cold rinse. (the machine only does cold rinse...) Our DHW and dryer are natural gas, and we aren’t getting hit with big bills for that as it is - avg is about 25 ccf’s / month. Not sure what the water bill is, but that isn’t big either, so I want to see what the impact will be on the ELECTRIC bill…
Even if it’s a small impact, that will tell us something, and give us a better handle on how to figure the payback based on OUR useage, not some hypothetical gov’t number with the same sort of relation to reality as an EPA mileage sticker…
The rest of the discussion is interesting, but off the topic of what I’m asking. No intention of flaming anyone, but I’m trying to find the answer to a question, and am wanting to keep dragging the discussion back onto the topic until I can find some sort of answer.
What I’m hoping is that someone has a Kill-A-Watt and an energy star washer, and would be willing to plug the washer into it and tell me what the power draw was for one normal load… Assuming someone has both items, I would think this would be an easy thing to do…
Heh heh, well, considering a non-Energy Star model draws 20 watts per load, it can’t save that much on actual electrical usage. In fact, since it spins the drum faster, it might even use more actual electricity. The savings is going to be in less water used, and less dryer time due to the clothes having more water spun out of them. The dryer is going to be the major energy sucker, in my house we have to run the dryer about 160 minutes per load to gt the clothes dry. If they came out drier from the washer, that time might be cut to 80 minutes, 60 minutes, and that will chop my electric bill way down since I have an electric dryer. My times are longer than they should be because the idiots that built my house put the laundry room in the middle, then ran the exhaust vent up, then over, then up at an angle, then straight up, where it ultimately empties onto the roof. I had to install a booster in the middle of it just to get the air out, before I added the booster it was taking as much as 300 minutes per load to get the clothes dry. And, our HOA specifically bans drying clothes outside.
I’m also interested in knowing its actual use, but view it as academic based on what a regular washer uses.
Heh heh, well, considering a non-Energy Star model draws 20 watts per load, it can’t save that much on actual electrical usage. In fact, since it spins the drum faster, it might even use more actual electricity. The savings is going to be in less water used, and less dryer time due to the clothes having more water spun out of them. The dryer is going to be the major energy sucker, in my house we have to run the dryer about 160 minutes per load to gt the clothes dry. If they came out drier from the washer, that time might be cut to 80 minutes, 60 minutes, and that will chop my electric bill way down since I have an electric dryer. My times are longer than they should be because the idiots that built my house put the laundry room in the middle, then ran the exhaust vent up, then over, then up at an angle, then straight up, where it ultimately empties onto the roof. I had to install a booster in the middle of it just to get the air out, before I added the booster it was taking as much as 300 minutes per load to get the clothes dry. And, our HOA specifically bans drying clothes outside.
I’m also interested in knowing its actual use, but view it as academic based on what a regular washer uses.
I’m thinking you may be off on your number for a non-ES washer - you certainly seem to have the unit wrong. “Watt” is a unit for measuring the amount of power being drawn at any single instant, however it’s not a unit of power CONSUMPTION… It’s sort of like looking at your car speedo and saying I’m driving 30 miles, instead of driving 30 miles PER HOUR.
Power consumption is measured in Watt-HOURS or power consumed over time, normally expressed in KiloWattHours to get rid of some spare zeroes. One KiloWattHour is the equivalent of consuming 1,000 Watts for ONE hour - whether you actuall did it that way or as 100 watts for 10 hours, or 1,000 watts for 1/10 hour (or 6 minutes).
When I measure our washer, I’m getting 0.2 KiloWattHOURS per cycle, which takes between 20-30 minutes, or the equivalent of running a 100 Watt light bulb for 2 hours, or an average of 4-500 watts at any given time during the cycle - since the machine is doing different things at different times the amount it’s drawing at any given instant will vary from near zero (while soaking the clothes, and running only the timer) to probably close to 1,000 watts (when spinning or agitating).
I could actually see a potential for a fair bit of difference in that power draw - how does turning a drum and gently tumbling clothes compare to the energy draw of driving an agitator through the transmission? Even the question of spinning the clothes might take less energy depending on how the motor was geared and the friction of the drum turning mechanisms… I’d be surprised to see a HUGE difference, but could easily see the number going down to say 0.15 or maybe even 0.1 kWH per load…
I agree it’s a somewhat academic, question but it’s still important to me..
i have heard that significant savings can come from using a front loader washer . they wring the clothes better & the savings effect from the reduced dryer power.
If your meter is a model P4400 Kill A Watt, by “P3”, there are 4 grey buttons, and one pink one. From the left, the buttons and their functions are:
1. Volt - instant voltage reading, should be around 110-120, and pretty stable, if it changes much you have a wiring problem, but will vary from outlet to outlet, house to house by a couple volts depending on the length of your power lines.
2. Amp - instant current draw reading - will vary as the load turns on / off, or changes what it’s doing
3. Watt / VA - dual function button, cycles between the instant wattage draw, and the “Volt-Amp” draw. On a pure resistance load, the two numbers should be the same, however if you have a load with a high inductance (i.e. motors or transformers) or capacitance, then there will be a difference due to the way the phases of voltage and current are shifted - the difference can be calculated and is known as the “Power Factor” or PF. Both numbers are useful as they indicate the power draw at a particular instant, which is what you need to know if sizing a generator or solar array, or even figuring out if you are overloading a circuit…
4. Hz / PF - dual function button, cycles between the AC frequency in Hz, and the Power Factor. The AC frequency should ALWAYS be at or near 60 on a grid tied system, and not change (in North America, other parts of the world use 50, and some marine, aviation and military gear uses other frequencies.) If you have DIY power, it should still be at 60, if you see something different you need to fix your system. The PF or Power Factor is the ratio between the Watts and VA draws, as shown by button #3
5. KWH / Hours - (Pink button) - Dual function button, cycles between Total KiloWattHours consumed by the load, and the total elapsed hours since the meter was plugged in last… These are the critical numbers which says how the load impacts your power bill, the other info is academically interesting but not of immediate value other than possibly for diagnostics.
If you have a different meter, the buttons may be different, but the above is what I’d expect the different functions to do.
In the case of a washer or something like that where the consumption is cyclic, and presumably irregular, you don’t care that much about elapsed time - plug the meter in between the load and the outlet, run a cycle and see what it reads, which will give the consumption per cycle, and your bill impact is the per cycle consumption times the number of cycles per billing period. OTOH if you have something like a fridge, or another “always on” appliance, then the elapsed time is useful - connect as always, and leave the unit for a few days of normal use. Then read the elapsed time and the KWH consumed, and divide to get an average KWH consumption per hour (or day), and your bill impact will be that average times the length of a cycle…
If you combined it with a whole range of Energy Star appliances, paying close attention to the labels and not just the Energy Star sticker, I could see you cutting your non-hardwired electrical usage in half or better. And, also need to keep in mind that water usage counts in the savings, too. Not just heated water, but water in general. The front loader washers claim to use half to a third of the water of a top loader, but if you gotta have a top loader 
