Energy usage log

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cmonkey
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Re: Energy usage log

Post by cmonkey »

Actually that last one wasn't the one I was looking for. This one has the most detailed electric usage I've found.

There are ways to monitor any circuit, although this site is more directed toward folks with geo systems, which is how I found it in the first place. I'd like to have one on each circuit, or at least anything over 20 amps.

cmonkey
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Re: Energy usage log

Post by cmonkey »

jennypenny wrote:My PC (on an average of 16 hours/day) is over $60/month. :shock:

I have been testing our desktop and it is running at about 110 watts sitting idle (30 watts for LCD screen and 80 watts for the tower). Under full load it goes to about 200 watts. Our power supply is 600 watts capable, so that tells me that the internals are undersized. When it goes to sleep (10-20 minutes of idle) it consumes 10 watts. Daily kWh are looking to be similar to the fridge, so perhaps $3-$5/month to run.

To get this high of power usage, do you have an Alienware/gaming rig?? Are you processing SETI?


Also, after 3 days of monitoring the fridge, usage was the same. About 1.33 kWh/day so I am paying $3-$4 per month to run my full sized fridge. No justification to get a mini at this point. DW is pleased.


I am fairly sure the 80/20 rule can account for our bill at this point as its two big things taking up most of our bill (stove & water heater). Our water heater is 5500 watt and runs for 1-2 hours daily, which accounts for most of our non-HVAC usage. I am going to turn down the thermostat from 140F.

I can tackle the water heater by hooking up the desuperheater on our geo system. When it runs in the winter and summer, it is supposed to reduce our hot water bill by over 85%. I bought a small tank for it right after we got the geo system, but I never installed it so that's on the radar to do soon.

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Chris
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Re: Energy usage log

Post by Chris »

cmonkey wrote: I have been testing our desktop and it is running at about 110 watts sitting idle (30 watts for LCD screen and 80 watts for the tower). Under full load it goes to about 200 watts. Our power supply is 600 watts capable, so that tells me that the internals are undersized. When it goes to sleep (10-20 minutes of idle) it consumes 10 watts.
When I did my Kill-a-watt rampage some years ago, I researched a lot about PC power usage.

The power supply converts AC to DC, so there is a lot of loss there. Upgrading to an 80-plus power supply brought a significant improvement over the stock power supply I had been using. I also learned that peak efficiency is reached at certain load factors; the low-end tends to be where they are least efficient. So I actually ended up getting a smaller PSU, since I expected my future upgrades to be more miserly power consumers (and they were).

My current rig runs at 40 watts idle, 1 watt sleeping. Your idle seems high, though I don't know what your hardware is. Modern CPUs -- even fast ones -- should govern their frequency down when not working (which is most of the time). I would check your OS setting for that. Also, be sure that your CPU can really idle... you might have processing keeping the CPU running at a higher speed. Intel offers PowerTop for Linux that provides lots of useful info about identifying processes causing power consumption. I'm sure there is something similar for Windows.

cmonkey
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Re: Energy usage log

Post by cmonkey »

We got our December bill and it is a little better than last year when you look under the covers. In 2015 the average temp was 36, this year it was 25. We had some cold weather in the first half of the month.

We used about the same kWh, 1280. Well over half of that is the geo system. It uses 23 kWh/day in 20-30F degree temps, and up to 35kWh/day in 0-20F. The aux hasn't kicked on yet down to about -5. Last year it would have. So our insulating is starting pay for itself.

Prices are also half a cent cheaper this year so our bill was $8 less.


It also dawned on me how I can solve 3 cooking problems with 1 solution - our slower cooker.

1. I find cooking in the evening to be an inconvenience. I'm hungry so I just want something ready made.
2. The stove uses a lot of energy. Just 2 burners for 30 minutes would be 1.5 kWh.
3. Less DISHES!

Our slower cooker uses 260 watts on high and 162 watts on low. So we are gonna start using it several times per week.

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fiby41
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Re: Energy usage log

Post by fiby41 »

Image
Now I have to see how much this'll increase now that we've started using AC.

As compared to the post I made 2 years ago, the bill has halved. I suspect the PC breaking down.
But new addition is the laptop which is comatose as it shuts down if not charging.
New additions last year Jan/Feb were fridge and a working TV. But both had 5 star energy rating.

vexed87
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Re: Energy usage log

Post by vexed87 »

DW and I have been in the new house for a month now. It's 1180 sq ft, 3 bedroom detached.

Electricity meter indicates 144 kWh used over last 30 days.
Gas a little more complicated, because I don't have all the details to calculate kWh, but using estimates I came up with a figure of 386kWh.

I'm quite pleased with these figures, they are on the lower end of UK usage, there's definitely room to improve though. The house needs to be decked out with more efficient LED lighting, lots of inefficient halogen down lighters in at the moment. Heating hasn't been used except for maybe the first week in the house during some cooler weather, the water boiler is <70% efficient, G rated. :shock: We won't bother replacing this until it breaks down though as it might take a long time to pay back for an early upgrade given our lower than average usage. Being a new build, there's plenty of insulation in already, I think the house still needs some basic weather stripping and some draughts plugging, given that we are not heating the house at this time of year, I can put that off a while until we have decorated.

The house came with an 8 year old dishwasher, I'm sure that's pretty inefficient too, but again we won't be replacing it unless it breaks down. I think I can halve our water heating costs by setting the hot water timer to run for 30 minutes in the evening, rather than setting it running manually with the +1 hour setting when we need the hot water. I haven't yet figured out the timer setup, it's on my list of stuff to do! I think the tank is on the larger size for a two person household, but if we heat it up, it usually lasts us a couple of days before the temp drops too much, which is good going.

cmonkey
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Re: Energy usage log

Post by cmonkey »

Our energy bill for May dropped 20 bucks from last year, down to 80 from 100. Air drying baby!
vexed87 wrote: DW and I have been in the new house for a month now. It's 1180 sq ft, 3 bedroom detached.
Am I to assume a journal update is in progress? ;)

vexed87
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Re: Energy usage log

Post by vexed87 »

off topic:

@cmonkey, I have been consciously neglecting it, partly because savings have dropped percipitously, whilst I have been busy emptying my savings accounts buying garden tools, and other more tedious stuff like curtains, fridge freezers, washing machines etc (all with a mind to optimise energy efficency of course. :lol:) Also, I'm being as patient as possible and not diving into remodelling everything right off the bat due to permaculture's golden rule of just observing your space and seeing what work's and what doesn't before making changes, hence not a great deal to share just yet!

back on topic:
WRT air drying, I'm thinking of DIY'ing washing line, just need something to attach a line from the house to, I just acquired a roof rack to haul timber home to build something like this: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/or ... e622df.jpg
Sadly it's not going to save me much energy due to there being no drier in at baseline! :mrgreen:

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fiby41
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Re: Energy usage log

Post by fiby41 »

fiby41 wrote:
Thu May 11, 2017 12:27 am
Now I have to see how much this'll increase now that we've started using AC.
Note on the bill says usage increased by about 30% as compared to same month last year.

Insulated gaps at the hinges of the door and window with tape and bubble wrap, halfway through last month. Hopeful this'll reduce as summer is over.
Last edited by fiby41 on Tue Jun 06, 2017 9:59 am, edited 1 time in total.

cmonkey
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Re: Energy usage log

Post by cmonkey »

Actually my usage dropped by a lot more than 20%. Last year we used 788 kwh, this year was 485 kwh. The last time we were this low was January 2013 which was before we had the geo heating.

Amazingly, we used 733 last month and paid 2 dollars less than this month. Stupid summer rates. :evil:

FBeyer
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Re: Energy usage log

Post by FBeyer »

It has now been one year since we got the keys for our house.
Total KwH expenditure over 12 months: 329.

Threehundredandtwentynine.

cmonkey
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Re: Energy usage log

Post by cmonkey »

Geeze. sqft?

FBeyer
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Re: Energy usage log

Post by FBeyer »

About 965 ft2, two adults and one 3 year old.

Electronics are a tablet and a laptop computer. Induction stove, we use it for heating water rather than the microwave. Energy efficient fridge. We use the oven approx. twice per week for baking. Most of the house's activity is in the living room where the lights are almost never on during summer (the sun sets at 23...) but on most of the time during winter. We can comfortably light the entire living room with two light sources because we 'hacked' our floor lamp by installing a lampshade from a ceiling lamp on the floor lamp. With our 'minimalist' decoration scheme that lamp actually looks totally natural.

Eureka
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Re: Energy usage log

Post by Eureka »

FBeyer wrote:
Fri Jun 09, 2017 11:43 am
Threehundredandtwentynine.
Wow, well done! I thought my 500 kWh/year was low but I am only me - plus a ton of people crashing at my place for long periods. I guess they must be the culprits then.

cmonkey
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Re: Energy usage log

Post by cmonkey »

This summer has been very good to our electric bill. Every month was around $80 which is a lot lower than in the last few years when we were over $100 per month.

August was the single best month since the first year we moved in, we used 377 kwh with a bill of $54. This might not seem low to some of you but this is "all energy' for us, we have no gas or propane and I'd say most of this was cooking and the water heater. August was also very cool and so we never used any HVAC.

bryan
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Re: Energy usage log

Post by bryan »

Wow. Very jealous of some numbers!

I've just gotten to see my first electricity bill/usage in more than four years.. ~175kWh/mo which seems high given I don't have AC or a washer/dryer. The things that obviously suck (power) are an electric tea kettle, an electric range (no microwave), and the not great refrigerator that comes with the unit. Other than that there is not really anything else.. occasional use of the PC but otherwise using low power computing devices and some light occasionally..

theanimal
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Re: Energy usage log

Post by theanimal »

It's been slightly over a year since I moved into the 12 x 12 cabin. As I've probably stated somewhere above, my setup is off grid. I keep tabs on my own usage but don't have a definite number. Extrapolating my daily usage over the year, a conservative guess is that I used about 50 kwh over the whole year. I'm guessing it's slightly less. My neighbors use a lot more than I do, but I'd imagine it'd still be less than most here.

I just had to install a new inverter (same capacity as before, 300 w) that has a slightly higher draw when on. I've also added internet, which when on draws about 8-10 watts. I'm guessing this next year will be higher than 50 kwh. I'm not happy about that! Ideally, it'd be 0. But I haven't figured out a way to do that yet without decreasing my quality of life.

There is a cafe somewhat nearby that I could use to charge devices and peruse the internet. Not sure how feasible that is though.

Edit: I was curious where this would put me on a global scale and did some digging. Averaged out, Americans use 11,000 kwh per person per year. Holy shit!!! :shock: I think I've read that before, but now that really sinks in how much that is.

Looks like I'm on par with the African country of Eritrea according to this list. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c ... onsumption

FBeyer
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Re: Energy usage log

Post by FBeyer »

Nov 2016 to Nov 2017 - 413 KWh

Two people at home all day from Dec to May, one person at home all day from May up until now.

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jennypenny
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Re: Energy usage log

Post by jennypenny »

My brother applied spray foam insulation in October. I'm amazed at how much it is helping. We didn't do the walls yet, only the attic, and it's still making a big difference. The heater hardly kicks on at night, even when it's snowing (like now). Between our other efforts and the insulation, we're down about 60% from our power bill highs.

I should mention I'm making a real effort to keep it down. I run the washing machine overnight because it's at the opposite end of the house from the water heater and pulling the hot water through takes the edge off the cold. I time the dishwasher to run right before I get up and open it as soon as it's done to add heat and humidity to the kitchen. We also have curtains between all of the openings between the main rooms and I open and close them in a timely way to take advantage of the solar heating from the area of the house with a glass roof.

I also cook based on the temperature. I boil pasta on cold/dry days and keep the water to sit out in colder rooms for added heat and humidity. If it's cold but wet (like today when it's snowing) I'll bake something and leave the oven door ajar afterward to heat and dry out the house. We'll also close the drain in the tub when taking a shower and leave the warm water in there to add humidity on really dry/cold days. I use a clothesline indoors in the winter and I'll hang the clothes out on dry days to add humidity as well.

Anyway ... the bill is finally where I want it to be. We're having new insulated garage doors installed next month which should help a bit. At the very least, I'm hoping that we won't have to run the space heater out there when working out.

My next goal is to only cook outside during the summer months, or as close to it as I can get. That will help with cooling and offset the extra energy usage. I'm considering letting my freezer empty out by the time the garden is producing so I can unplug it and eat only fresh food for a few months.


** Does anyone else get grief for trying to save $20 here and there on energy and such? People think I'm nuts for 'obsessing' over small amounts and think it's a sign I've 'gone too far'. I usually play the environmental card to defend myself, but I feel like those $20 bills add up. And it is better for the environment. They look at it as being cheap but I see it as avoiding waste (of which there really is no acceptable amount). Different mindsets, I guess.

George the original one
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Re: Energy usage log

Post by George the original one »

jennypenny wrote:
Wed Jan 17, 2018 9:05 am
** Does anyone else get grief for trying to save $20 here and there on energy and such? People think I'm nuts for 'obsessing' over small amounts and think it's a sign I've 'gone too far'. I usually play the environmental card to defend myself, but I feel like those $20 bills add up.
Wheaton levels and they're not considering how you are future-proofing. It's no different than people driving gas-guzzling SUVs on their daily commute because "safer" and "0-60 mph in 7 seconds" and "can go anywhere anytime" (but they don't because they aren't about to get that white Cadillac Escalade dirty or scratched), but then are shocked when gas prices rise.

Naturally I saw "take advantage of solar energy" and chuckled because here in dark-grey-winter-sky-land I was thinking "WTF is solar energy?" You did remind me that I shouldn't dump the bath water immediately after soaking for 20-30 minutes... the house can definitely gain more heat from it than I allow.

All the heat scavenging you do is kind of like composting kitchen scraps. Minimal routine effort with tangible benefits.

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