Home Electric Consumption - Page 6

 bscallywag wrote:

How are you evaluating these? Are you actually measuring the energy
consumption in some manner, or are you just estimating based on ratings
and assumed times of use? The latter is difficult to do accurately and
could easily produce that kind of error, particularly considering the
number of things in a modern household that consume electricity even
when they're supposedly turned off.

If you're actually measuring energy consumption, over what time scale
did you measure it? Did you measure all circuits simultaneously for
several days or a month? Day-to-day, week-to-week, and seasonal usage
patterns probably vary a bit, and your utility bill is essentially a
statistical average of these variations. You're only off by about 30%,
which I could easily see happening if you only took one or two days
worth of data, or if you measured each of your circuits at separate times.

 

So each circuit was measured for a minimum of a week.   Except for the
'large' loads which have been monitored over 6 months. The run times
recorded almost every day.

Over the time period we have increased our use of CF lamps and have
seen the consumption of the lighting circuits go down, but it has not
had a significant change in the overall consumption.

One thing I have noticed is that my X and Y loads are unbalanced. I am
not sure how the meter will deal with that.


Brian

 

So I'll assume your measurements are true kwh and are accurate.

31 kWh for heating water seems like a lot.  That's enough to heat over 150
gallons of water from 60F to 140F.  That would be like taking a shower (with
a low flow head) of almost 80 minutes long.  I suppose with a group of four,
that shower every day, that's possible (20 minutes apiece??)

If you shut off all the fixtures, does the water pump come on very much?  It
shouldn't come on for several hours if no water is being drawn off.  Same
thing with the water heater.

I wonder....  Do you have bare piping running out the top of your water
heater or a broken mixing valve somewhere that is allowing a constant
thermo-syphon out your heater?  That would make the piping hot all the time
and that would use a lot of 'hot water' without there actually being water
removed from the system.  And if the piping is in the living space, add to
your cooling problems.  Wait a couple of hours after no one has used any
water and use your hand on the water piping.  Very little of it should still
be warm and none should be hot.

daestrom

 
I'am using 5kWh a day, how is the cure for cancer going?
i meen, you must be a highly valuable person, and working on a great contribution
to mankind to use that much energy.

Not even Al gore is using that much, i think, and at least hi is spending his
time
telling all others not to use energy ;-)

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/GlobalWarming/story?id )06888
"Armed with Gore's utility bills for the last two years, the Tennessee Center
for Policy
Research charged Monday that the gas and electric bills for the former vice
president's
 20-room home and pool house devoured nearly 221,000 kilowatt-hours in 2006,
more than
 20 times the national average of 10,656 kilowatt-hours. "

"If this were any other person with $30,000-a-year in utility bills, I wouldn't
care,"
says the Center's 27-year-old president, Drew Johnson. "But he tells other
people how to live and he's not following his own rules."


Jan Rasmussen

 
I'am sorry, i have nothing to contribute to help you.

I was telling a friend how much a guy on the internet used in electricity a day,
and his reaction was very close to this,,, :-)
http://www.jahozafat.com/php/sounds/?id=gog&media=MP3S&type=Movies&movie=Back_To_The_Future&quote=greatscott.txt&file=greatscott.mp3

Jan Rasmussen