Monitoring Electricity Use...

Highbeam said:

I think it is bad. I measure half of that and I have kids too. His use is double mine. As though another house is hooked up.

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At first look, I agree - I have four kids and run an average of 15Kwh/day total. Granted I don't have electric heat (unless we run it in the basement which obviously ups the daily use) or an electric hot water heater, but still - we do have electric range and a freezer as well as a fridge (both over 10 years old). Hmm... then again I just looked up how much a hot water heater uses on average (http://energy.gov/eere/femp/energy-cost-calculator-electric-and-gas-water-heaters-0#output) and it does appear that 14Khw/day isn't too far from the average... that would put me in that 30Kwh/day range...

Including the 60 amp, 8' square, 10 year old hot tub on my concrete patio I am still under 30 kwh for each of the days this week. Electric water heater, range, Freezer, refer, and kegerator.

Water heater, separate meter, average 100 kwh/month. Was 200 kwh/month before super-insulating.

jebatty said:

Water heater, separate meter, average 100 kwh/month. Was 200 kwh/month before super-insulating.

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So that's the first 7 kwh of your daily use. With no space heating demand your next big one is refrigeration which I have logged as 100 watts for 50% of the day or 1.2 kwh per day per refer.

A little cooking, coffee making, lighting, and 15 is possible.

Kill-o-watt reports side-by-side refrig/freezer at 3 kwh/day and upright freezer at 1.3 kwh/day.

Assumptions on kwh usage for an appliance can be misleading. My wife did 3 loads of clothes with the LG front loading washing machine yesterday. I measured kwh with the Kill-o-watt and found the LG uses 0.29 kwh for the three loads, or 0.10 kwh/load. I assumed usage would be much higher because each load takes "a long time." I guess much of that time is spent not doing anything but just soaking and occasionally tossing the clothes.

Killawatt meter on my expensive 27 cu ft side by side fridge /freezer is 1.6 Kw per day . basement freezer that I added an extra 1.5 insulation is .4 Kw per day . Yes (400 watt hours) per day. heres proof insulation works and frequency/servo drive in a fridge compressor WORKS.

solarstar said:

Killawatt meter on my expensive 27 cu ft side by side fridge /freezer is 1.6 Kw per day . basement freezer that I added an extra 1.5 insulation is .4 Kw per day . Yes (400 watt hours) per day. heres proof insulation works and frequency/servo drive in a fridge compressor WORKS.

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Be careful with the advice to insulate refers/freezers. I own one fridge and an upright freezer that both utilize heat discharge tubing that is buried under the metal skin of the cabinet. This is unlike the olden days when there was a seperate coil on the back or under the appliance. If you insulate the skin of a refer like this you will be trapping the heat.

I hooked up my father's 18 year old fridge/freezer to the killawatt yesterday. It runs at 153 watts. Probably 50% of the day so it will be a cheap runner too. Refrigeration is NOT a major energy user when compared to heating water or incandescent lights.

Highbeam said:

Be careful with the advice to insulate refers/freezers. I own one fridge and an upright freezer that both utilize heat discharge tubing that is buried under the metal skin of the cabinet. This is unlike the olden days when there was a seperate coil on the back or under the appliance. If you insulate the skin of a refer like this you will be trapping the heat.

I hooked up my father's 18 year old fridge/freezer to the killawatt yesterday. It runs at 153 watts. Probably 50% of the day so it will be a cheap runner too. Refrigeration is NOT a major energy user when compared to heating water or incandescent lights.

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Good point that I did not mention : I did not mention that about 30% is left open (uninsulated) where the heat dissipation coils are are using the one side of the freezer to dissipate this heat. Only insulate the other areas.... the insulation dropped my Kw usage just about one third. on this freezer... A very quick payback for about $10 bucks of Styrofoam back then..15 Years ago

I am starting to track some energy usage.

Tankless Hot-water Heater, .14 KwH for 24 hours
Energy Star Freezer, 1.18 KwH for 30 hours
Kureg coffee maker, .75 KwH for 24 hours
Cordless Phone, .04 KwH for 24 hours
Baby Monitor, .04

I am now tracking my uv light setup for my well water. I just realized it was down there and it runs 24x7x365.

maple1 said:

Our 2 year old 80 gallon electric hot water heater uses about 6kwh/day on average. Family of 5.

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I'm very glad to hear this - I'm looking to replace my oil indirect water tank with electric. Looking at your numbers it seems I may burn about 2190Kwh/year which at .17/kwh comes to $372/year - I'm currently burning about 200 gallons of oil heating my water for about $650-800/year ($3.25-$4/gallon). Looks like a $272/year savings on the low side - should pay back pretty soon (and my actual electric cost is lower as I'm running solar with about $0.10/kwh average over 10 years).

surprisingly close numbers for similarly sized family. My family of 8 was using 14 Kw / day usage over a 60 day monitoring period . numbers are greatly skewed now as I'm using Greywater heat exchange , and 100% solar hot water now from mid March to about mid October.

maple1 said:

Kureg coffee maker, .75 KwH for 24 hours

You must drink a lot of coffee.

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I don't think so. My coffee maker (Bunn A10) uses roughly double that, per day. I rarely brew more than 2 pots (96 oz.), although it's designed for usage rates of 70 gal/day.

a lot of the Keurig's keep a reservoir warm all the time. Mine does for several hours, and then goes to 'sleep'.

Joful said:

I don't think so. My coffee maker (Bunn A10) uses roughly double that, per day. I rarely brew more than 2 pots (96 oz.).

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If you want to reduce your coffee maker power consumption, get one that has an insulate carafe instead of a burner to keep it warm. Cooks the coffee less too which some consider to help hold the flavor better. Less standby power loss... not sure I'd do it just for power reduction though, have to like the coffee and drink it before it gets too cold too

Okay, advanced apologies for the derail, but responding:

Slow1 said:

If you want to reduce your coffee maker power consumption, get one that has an insulate carafe instead of a burner to keep it warm.

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Good advice, but I don't use the pot warmer much. Maybe an hour on Saturday or Sunday, to keep the carafe warm while we consume, but that's it. The weekday brew goes directly from the pot into my Stanley vacuum thermos to take to work, and the after dinner brew goes straight into my mug for immediate consumption.

woodgeek said:

a lot of the Keurig's keep a reservoir warm all the time. Mine does for several hours, and then goes to 'sleep'.

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The killer on all these coffee makers is the hot water capacity. The Keurig does have a sleep mode, which I really dislike, for many reasons. It stays on a few hours after use, wasting energy when you don't really need the hot water, and then it shuts itself off and goes cold before you actually need a second pot. Also, I can't understand how storing water at room temp is not going to promote the growth of something. The Bunn A10 keeps the water hot all the time, has a MUCH larger heater (1140 watts) for very fast recovery time, and in fact they instruct you to drain it if you ever want to turn off the water heater. During standby, I hear the heater cycle on for a few seconds every half hour, or so.

Both machines make pretty good coffee, although using vastly different technique. Only the Bunn gets hot enough to get a truly proper extraction, although I've had some pretty good cups of coffee off of a Keurig. I have a Keurig near my desk at work, because they're simple no-mess coffee, but my home machine is the far superior Bunn A10. I bring a 1 liter thermos of coffee with me from the A10 every day, and only use the Keurig on occasions when that runs out. Some things are worth wasting a few electrons!

Yar. I don't like the Keurig's. I make my pod coffee in a Bunn machine: the Bunn My Cafe. Nice extraction, and fast reheating of the reservoir (~45 seconds?) if it has gone to sleep.

begreen said:

Agreed Keurig is not great coffee and it's an environmental disaster. (50 K-Cups to the landfill.)

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Agreed. Reusable cups are available though. I use them at work.
I've read that Keurig is going towards the DRM model of allowing only Keurig or other licensed K-cups to work in their newer machines.
http://www.cnet.com/news/keurig-2-0-brews-up-drm-to-freeze-out-copycat-cups/

begreen said:

But usually we heat the water on the stove

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In the spirit of this thread I must point out that its typically more energy conserving to heat water in your microwave.

Heat Pump and wind.