my water comes from a surface spring. Since bears litterally shit in my drinking water it has to be ozonated and circulated constantly to keep it safe. Due to a really stupid original design in the system It's not trying to ozonate and circulate the small 200 gallon inside tank where the ozone is added. It's trying to circulate the inside 200 gallon tank and the outside 3000 gallon tank. I'll be changing the layout within the next month and dropping the 1hp tank to a small 12 V pump that should use somewhere between 30 and 50 watts continuous. That right there may save me $30/month and put me at a more reasonable 5-600 kwh/month

My PC really could be sucking down 200-300 kwh/month. It's a monster. athlon 64, 19"CRT, 6 HD's installed...

If you want to know intuitively which appliances use the most electricity, feel for the heat that radiates from them (or from their wall adaptors).

True, computer screens also produce light and stereos also produce sound, but, compared to the heat they generate, these particular non-heat outputs are almost negligible. I'll guess that the only items in your house that have a low heat output-to-energy input ratio are your flourescent bulbs.

heh the 1 hp pump actually heats the 200 gallons of ice cold water to a nice luke warm if I don't use enough in a day.

Thanks strider for the data. I work with some folks who do these measurements all the time for work, so I gave them a link to your results.

How about all the 'vampires'--all the external power supplies? Do you have cell charger plugged in? Answering machine? Coffee maker? Clock radio? Battery charger? Some of these are incredibly inefficient and supply just 20% of the power input in use and sometimes as little when not in use. We've measured the cumulative impact in some houses as high as 10%.

The fridge could be a real energy saving potential too, depending on age. In the US the minimum efficiency standard for a fridge starting in 2001 was at such a low level that none of the models in production in 1995 (when the standard was approved) could even meet the 2001 level. But they all do now.

I measured my cable box as well...same horrible results. 23W off, 24W in analog mode, and 25W in hi-def mode. I'm working with China and a number of other countries now to set an efficiency standard that would at least drop the off/standby mode to no more than 3 W, but it won't take effect til next year.

Ok the fridge results are in. 1.26 kwh used per day so 37.8kwh/month or $2.29 per month.
to compair this to new models thats 453 kwh/year which seems about average compaired to new models. It ran for 8 hours out of the last 26 hours as well. I think this fridge is only a couple of years old, and I used insulating foil on the back to move the heat away from the cold parts and that has made the compressor kick on much less then it used to. I'm sure improvement is possible but I'm not too worried about it at the moment. When I finish measuring everything else I'll be retesting the fridge for a longer period to be certain that I didn't just have a good usage day out of it.

Sparaxis' post reminded me of some more power using parts of my house. I have a wall wort for my cellphone charger. I'm actually impressed with it, it shows zero draw when not being used and only 3 watts when charging. I charge for 4 or 5 hours once a week so I'm not even going to do the math.

I do have a toaster and a coffee machine. Both are very rarely used (less then once per month for the coffee maker and maybe twice a month on toast) both use zero when plugged in but not on.

I don't have an answering machine as I don't have a land line, alarm clock is battery powered, I don't have a battery charger either.

the nightlight says it's 1 watt, it registers as 4 watts when running the radio in my bedroom is 0 when off but 4 watts when running as well. I use them at night so lets say 7 hours

so thats 0.028 kwh/day each or .84 kwh/month. about 10 cents does them both.

So next up for testing is the ozone generator and then this PC. By the end of this weekend I should have results.

This gives me 210 out of 1112 kwh explaned, thats 18%. I wonder if I can measure my hotwater tank somehow. I know my pump is bad but I can't believe that 60% of my energy useage goes to that filtration system

ok the ozone generator sucks down a constant 14 W of power so thats 0.33 KWH /day which is about 2 cents. This works out to 10 kwh/month or 60 cents.

the water filter never used anything while I was measuring. I'll need to leave it running all week to catch it when it enters the back wash stage, that is still just a flip a valve and wait 30 minutes then flip it back I think. I'm going with too small to measure at this point.

Initial measurements of the PC are interesting

the monitor draws 3 watts when turned off.
it draws 60 watts when turned on and in text mode
it draws 88 watts when in graphical mode.
effectively the monitor is turned off for 17 hours a day and is in graphical the remainder so thats
0.667 kwh/day or about 4 cents. this is 20 kwh/month or $1.2/month

The cable modem draws 13 watts when online, 11 when offline it's almost always online and has no off switch. so 0.312 kwh/day or 9.36 kwh/month which is 57 cents/month

The main box is interesting. I will leave the meter running longer to get a true average for use but right now it looks like it's at 146 watts when idle and about 160 when working. It's at 10w when turned off. It runs 24 hours/day and is idle almost always. so thats 3.5kwh/day or 105 kwh/month this works out to $6.35/month If I shutdown when at work and in bed I can cut this to 1.2 kwh/day or 36 kwh/month $2.18/month saving me a little over $4/month. However given where I live and the amount of sunlight I recieve in a day just turning the PC off when I'm not home would probably save me on buying 1 large solar panel if I was trying to become energy independant.

So as it stands I account for 354 out of 1112 or 31 % of my usage. I have found an easy way to shave off 6% of my useage just by turning off the PC when I'm not home. this won't always work because it is busy doing things for me some of the time but there are days when I just don't need it running, at least 50% of the time would be my guess.

still to measure are the TV and VCR and everything else that is on that powerbar but shouldn't be using any power. and the washing machine. I somehow doubt that they will account for more then 20% of my useage.

and the TV area results

I have a 27" tv a vcr that is just used to take inputs and push them to the TV not to play tapes, a dvd player that is rarely used a RF modulator to push the dvd signal from the dvd to the tv. and a PS2

I plug them all into 1 power bar that I turn off when the tv is not in use. so 0 watts used most of the time, I'd guess 5 hours/day I'm watching something on there though.
with everything turned off but the power bar on it draws 9watts. the break down follows

TV 6 watts off
66 W on
VCR 3 W off
6 W on (not playing a tape)
DVD 0 W off
5 W on
PS2 0W off (not in standby)
30 W on
rf modulator
0W off
unknown while on, I can't imagine it's much though

Since I rarely play the PS2 or watch dvd's I'm just going off of the 5hours/day for the tv/vcr

so thats 72W or .36 kwh/day or 10.8 kwh/month or 65 cents/month.

And the washing machine uses 0.26 kwh/load so thats probably going to be 2 kwh/month or 12 cents.

I have been through this hunt for "leaking" electricity before. Some other places to check:

Doorbell transformer
Heating/cooling system transformer (to run the thermostat)
Every ground fault interruptor outlet in your house, garage, and yard
Wired-in smoke detectors
Anything with a "brain" - my dishwasher uses 5 watts no matter what
Dimmer switches for lights that "remember" pre-set levels of dim
Ignitor for gas fireplace
Burgler Alarms
Outdoor lawn sprinkler controller transformers

It's amazing how many devices a typical American home can have in it that just sit there and waste electricity.

That meter box is marketed in the US as "kill-a-watt". I shopped around online for mine and got what was a bargan at the time. Don't know if the prices have gone up or down.

The two biggies are electric hot water tank heater and electric refrigerator. Once you take care of those the results will be stunning. They run all the time and they suck down watts fast.

My tank has two different insulation jackets now. (1_ A thin inner one of thin plastic with a bubble layer and aluminum sprayed on it by the manufacture and (2) an fiberglass layer with a vinyl wrap.

Ebay link to the inner insulation layer.

I got a new refrigerator (old one was a mess and over 20 years old.) I had problems finding one that would fit under my cabinetes so I got what I could and it wasn't an Energy Star model. Still it uses way less power than the old monster did.

The next thing is air conditioning if you live in a hot location. I'm going to have insulation installed in the walls of my house on the 19th of this month. See this page:

http://www.livejournal.com/community/pe ... 12302.html

Could you tell us more about this? Is there a web site with info about how to do this? Do you have pictures of your set up?

Cute puppy.

Do you know if insulating jackets help with modern water heaters? I believe they have been built with a great deal of insulation for years (much like refrigerator efficiency). If the insulating jacket is only really effective for older water heaters I don't want to waste my time & energy on one.

Doorbell transformer -- don't have one, people knock

Heating/cooling system transformer (to run the thermostat) -- it's all electric baseboard, that at the moment are turned completely down on. they're 220 so I can't measure them

Every ground fault interruptor outlet in your house, garage, and yard - 4 of them in the house, not easy to test though

Wired-in smoke detectors Yep It's up there sucking away constantly. Can it really be much worse then the battery ones?

Anything with a "brain" - my dishwasher uses 5 watts no matter what - I think I got everything other then the large appliances that are 220 already

Dimmer switches for lights that "remember" pre-set levels of dim - don't have any

Ignitor for gas fireplace - don't have

Burgler Alarms - don't have

Outdoor lawn sprinkler controller transformers - don't have

I could see how a large house with lots of things would suck down a lot of phantom load though.

any extra insulation will help. On newer ones it just won't help as much

I posted about this here

http://www.peakoil.com/fortopic9368.html

I don't have any pictures at the moment but it was really simple just a little time consuming. Basic idea is to keep the heat from the coils and the compressor away from the fridge where things are supposed to be cold. I just carefully undid the clips holding the coilsto the back and slipped some of that foil covered bubble wrap insulation behind the coils. I then ducttaped it down. I used the same wrap to make a hood over the compressor to direct the heat out the back and not into the bottom