Garage freezer and fridge, plugged in together to the kill a watt for 24 hours show .04 kw/hr. So that's less than $3/mo at least when it's 10 degrees out!
Average daily electricity useage
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I still can't explain the well blowing air deal. Not much info out there but what there is is saying barometric pressure can cause blowing/sucking so maybe? Any how to the pressure issue: I found 1 of my frost free hydrants not adjusted right. Not enough pressure to send it out the stand pipe but I could hear it with my ear to the pipe. I was losing 6psi per hour and now it's holding at 50psi for the last 2 hours. So I'm optimistic I figured it out.
I'll check back in next month when the bill shows up. I'm gonna look into the efergy monitor though. It would have made life simpler trying to track down this crazy use!
I'll check back in next month when the bill shows up. I'm gonna look into the efergy monitor though. It would have made life simpler trying to track down this crazy use!
velvetfoot
Minister of Fire
.04 kw/h? Do you mean kwh? You can measure kwh with the kill-o-watt. .04kwh/day * 30 days = 1.2 kwh, which'd be like 15 cents or something.
My issue with the efergy will be that I have 4 panels. I guess I could start at the main line and work down? Main panel at the pole has a cut off and the well, house panel has the house and sends to a sub in the shop. Shop has a sub that sends power to shed.
velvetfoot
Minister of Fire
Yes. If use 1 kw/hr that's 1 kilowatt for 1 hr. In 24 hrs it would be 24kw or 24 kWh. I wrote it not per standard but it means the same thing.
velvetfoot
Minister of Fire
So, your freezer and fridge in the garage used .04kwh over a 24 period. That's like 1.2 kwh for a 30 day month. That's like, nothing.
I know. I figure it's because it's 30 degrees out there. Not much need to kick on this time of year. I have the kill a watt plugged into the house fridge to see what it does.
lml999
Minister of Fire
Your usage seems quite high. I'm at 650-710 kWh per month for a four bedroom colonial, electric stove, gas cooktop and dryer, hydronic hot water heat (5 zones plus an indirect), two newish refrigerators, well, gravity septic. Two of us in the house, mostly.
Highbeam
Minister of Fire
It wasn't your water heater. They're quite well insulated these days.
I have a kill-a-watt too, big surprise right? I found that modern refrigerators and freezers use hardly any power. Super low. Only 100 watts when running 50% of the day so less than 2 kWh per day for the kitchen refrigerator.
Multiple subpanels is no problem. Put the efergy on the main panel right behind the meter. It wirelessly transmits to the monitor. If nothing else, you will know the instantaneous power flow and the daily kWh use. You could clamp it to the well circuit to log the power use on that circuit.
My power company has an online way to look up daily power use. It's slow and delayed but they offer it and my digital smart meter apparently reports to the utility often.
velvetfoot
Minister of Fire
It's in his unheated garage in Idaho. Ambient must be a factor, but how much of a factor?
Highbeam
Minister of Fire
lml999
Minister of Fire
I have a neat little meter that reads all power consumed and reports it to both a website and to an IOS application. Got it as part of a PV solar installation.
Since installation in September, I've used 2145 kWh and generated 2553 kWh. For the next couple of months, I expect to be generating just a bit less than we're using...come spring, we may be at a 3X ratio of generation to usage!
The HWH is probably 14 yrs old so not sure how it stands up to newer models as far as insulation goes.
All the water lines run under the house right at grade. It stays about 40-50 degrees under there. All the water lines run through engineered joists and are all copper uninsulated. I have a circulator pump on the HWH that run about 5 hours a day. I have it set for 3 hours in the morning and a couple hours at night so we don't have to wait 5 minutes for hot water. Pump is minimal cost to run ($2.00/mo). But I'm sure the HWH could benefit from having all the lines insulated. Next project is to buy 100' of pipe insulation and cut it 16" chunks!
maple1
Minister of Fire
Apparently I do have a smart meter which transmits (Not sure how often yet). All this time I thought it was just a digital meter. Is there an in home monitor that will receive info from the meter real time? Will the efergy do this?
jebatty
Minister of Fire
Usage for my electric hot water heater dropped 50% after super-insulating (6" fiberglass wrap top, sides, bottom), insulating the hot water pipes, and plumbing a U-shaped heat trap to stop ghost flows.
.04 per hour, so figuring a 720 hour month it's around 29kwh per month. Consequently the house fridge alone was about double that. So there's probably something to a fridge in a 72 degree house vs a 30 degree garage.
I don't know if the smart meter is done calculating the previous day when it resets for the current day? I would assume so. Every day previous to the 2nd I was averaging 82 kwh. Never lower than 60. Yesterday with the well issue fixed and HWH insulated the meter is showing 6.93 kwh. I'll check throughout the day to see if it changed but that is a about a 90% reduction.
velvetfoot
Minister of Fire
I doubt it . Since I moved into the place in September I haven't had a single day lower than 60kwh. The 1st month I watered the lawn quite a bit so I figured that was the cause. Then October and November roll around and the bill doesn't change. My previous house was all NG and city water so I had nothing to reference to. I finally got the kill a watt last month and started tracking all the 120 circuits. Every thing seems normal and even lower than I expected. I just didn't realize I have been pumping 200 gal of water a day! Good thing I live on fractured basalt. It never rose to the surface.
velvetfoot
Minister of Fire
It would be! I'm gonna call them here in a few minutes and see. Here's the graph from the meter for the last 14days of the billing cycle. Yesterday was day 14. The black line is temp.
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