Here is a real time graph of my household electricity use. I’m sharing this so that over the next few months I can share a few tips on trying to save energy around the home. I’ll be posting a guide on how I got this set-up. In the mean time, here are some interesting things I’ve noticed:
1. We seem to have a raft of appliances around the 2.4 kW mark. The kettle, cooker, dishwasher and dryer all seem to use about this much.
2. Our kitchen lights use a lot of power. 6 small spotlight bulbs managed to use just over 200W between them.
3. Lights use a surprising amount of energy! We have just moved into the house, and all the lightbulbs are the standard power-hungry filament bulbs. So as they all die hopefully we’ll be able to see energy reduce as we switch to energy efficient bulbs.
Use your up/down keys or mouse scroll to zoom in/out. The Home key takes you back maximum range. Double-click on a point to zoom in maximum.
A few things to note:
1. Although I am a full-time partner at PlentyWays.com, and our main office is in Laguna Hills CA, I am currently living in Dublin, Ireland. The wonders of the digital age! Therefore the machine I use to record my 230V house electricity usage is a monitor called CurrentCost. There are similar devices compatible for use in the US, some of which we will review on our site soon.
2. The house is a 2 story, 2 bedroom (+ box room) house about 700 sq ft in total. Just my fiancee and I manage to consume all this power.
3. Heating is gas, but cooker is electric. Shower runs off the gas heated water tank, dishwasher is cold feed. I’m looking around for some gas/water usage monitors and if I find any I’ll add that data too.
This post is categorized: Energy Monitors / Energy Saving Tips / For Home / Sam's Energy Use and tagged:
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http://www.theorganichome.co.uk
Hey there, great info. Keep up the great posts. I’m a fellow tweeter and friend of SolaRoy, btw. One thing to note here on this post about your light bulbs: If you’re planning to stay where you are for the next year or so, it’s more cost effective to replace your incandescent bulbs now than to wait until they burn out. Seems like a waste, but you’re only throwing away a 50 cent (pence?) bulb and saving a lot more in pounds/euro in monthly electricity costs, especially when you’re heading into the darker winter months. Of course, if you’re only going to be there for a few months, perhaps not, especially if you have many bulbs to replace.
Hi Solar Fred,
That’s a good point. The amount each bulb cost would probably be saved in energy savings within a couple of weeks. In fact it’s probably pretty easy to work out.
A single 60W bulb from my local Tesco supermarket costs about €1, the online shop tells me (expensive!). If I replace it with a 13W CFL bulb (equivalent brightness) that I use for around 4 hours a day then I’ll save 188 watt-hours a day. My electricity rate is around 15c per kwh, so that’s a daily saving of 2.82c. This means the electricity savings will pay for the discarded incandesant in just 35 days!
So energy saving bulbs vs an incandesant is a no-brainer. Having said that, throwing out a perfectly good bulb seems a bit wasteful, and I’m not sure which is ‘greener’. I think for the moment I’ll take the daily 2.82c hit.
On another note – the CFL’s I’ve been using so far (Tesco Greener living) don’t produce the nicest light – it’s a little bit greyer than I’m used to. Anyone have any recommendations really nice CFL bulbs ? (for UK/Ireland)
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