How to measure your electricity use

[Dan Dar3]

Quite common subject, whether in direct relation to your Xbox or your TV, but really applying to your entire household since mostly everything runs in electric power.

You can measure the power consumption per device or multiple devices if you connected them to an extension cord, using a Kill-A-Watt or similar device, like this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_A_Watt

[retromonger]

I use a KD 302 from Profitec
used it to measure the energy i saved running xbox with CF cart. about 7 Watt/hour less now.

[Dan Dar3]

I use a Prodigit 2000MU, bought it a few years ago from a Maplin store for 20 euro. Measured everything in the house, except for the electric shower and the electric hob Shows the current power usage as well as a total, if you want to leave it for longer to see the usage over a number of days / weeks.

Later on, I got a set of 4 wireless remote controlled sockets from the local Lidl, that was probably one of the best 20 euro I ever spent. I use them to turn off pretty much everything at the end of the day or when going out. One in the kitchen for an old CRT TV we barely use, one in the living room for the TV, Xbox, DVD all on the same extension cord, one in the office upstairs for the wi-fi and cable internet (saves me from going upstairs to reset it when UPC acts up every now and then) and one next to it for my desktop and Seagate NAS.

[retromonger]

HAHA

See, ones you know the numbers, you start acting. Can be very surprising how much energy gets wasted over time.
My router used to suck 8W. Since its Connected with my telephone (0.5W) i have to use it 24/7.
Now here sum simple calculation. 24 hours x 8W x 365 days x 0.2725 €/kWh = 19,09€ (ca. 25 Dollar). Just for Router every year
Now there is one plugged sucking "only" 6W. 14€ for being available by phone.
The xbox used to suck 2,5W/h. Now with CF cart inside its at 1,7W XD.
SSD instead of HDD, from 45W my PC now runs at 35W. Was an 2007 HDD inside.

Washing Mashin sucks 0,6kW for one wash. 1-2 a week.
Cooking,Boiling Water .... about 0,5kW a day.

Ones you have such a neat tool, you gone use it. And wonder

[retromonger]

does the control system itself suck energy ?
i never plugged them in. because it was one step too much for me. im fine with pragmatic solutions.

[Dan Dar3]

Found mine: Dario DMV-7010S. Power consumption 1W, I'm sure newer ones must be more efficient, mine is more than 5 years old - compared to my old CRT TV which consumes 9W on standby, or the Xbox which also consumes 1W in standby. Makes even more sense if you have them on the same extension.

No I agree, at the time I thought it as being too much, but in the end it proved convenient so I can reset the Internet that was upstairs, my main "office" being downstairs in the kitchen. I thought my missus wouldn't go along, but she was fine as soon as I assigned and labeled each button to say what it goes with which. On my way up at the end of the day (or more like morning) I don't need to go around and check and turn off each one of them, I just push the "All Off" button. That includes my router - even for a few hours, before my missus wakes up early and turns it back on

Some, including myself can be a bit obsessive about checking and turning things off before leaving the house - that's how I was raised and it's a bit part of myself, although it's quite mild for me It's not so much obsessing about it as just being cautious, especially after hearing stories about I don't know battery chargers overheating and melting when charging a battery that gone bad and things like that. In the end it proved quite practical to be honest, nowhere near as much hassle as I thought initially.

[professor_jonny]

Sort of on the same track but not really:

I used a fluke 434 3 phase power quality analyzer to test my whole house and after I did I sent the results to the power company.
I got sick of replacing incandescent lamps at the time and the problem was the transformer had packed up.

it ended up them fitting a new transformer at the road side to supply power to our house at no charge .

below is the letter I wrote to my self note the name at the top and the signature at the bottom, I also forwarded this on to the power company:

+1 for the little man

honestly I did not expect a reply but several days they were out there did their own logging and come back several days later with a new transformer

Code: Select all

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Jonathan brophy
TURU ROAD
RD 31
OPUNAKE
TARANAKI

Dear Jonathan:

Subject: logger results

     In regards to the logger results obtained in March I would recommend that there is possibly something wrong with the network supply in your area. The transformer tappings are possibly incorrect or the transformer is too small and or the cabling coming into your house from the road is of the incorrect sizing for the current consumption of your house.

Our event logger is set up to obtain results for a month and has been filled up in 10 days with over fifteen hundred isolated events.

I believe that at certain times of the night that the lights dim and flicker especially when working in you garage on you lathe or welder.

There seems to be many spikes in power exceeding 300 volts, these transients are not good for electronic devices in your dwelling.

Constant low voltage problems tend to burn out electrical components over time.
Also in the results we obtained a few neutral to ground swells which may indicate a loose earth neutral connection in the switch board or to the neutral on the power poles.
I would recommend passing this letter on to your service provider with logging results to get something sorted out quickly.
In the mean time I would recommend to get an electrician out to check for faulty connections in main switch board in your cow shed for any possible problems there and also contacting the faults department of your power supply company to check pole and transformer neutral connections.

Yours truly,




Jonathan Brophy
Technical Support
Corkill Systems Ltd

[xman]

How to measure your electric power consumption.................Lick fingers and stick in socket

[professor_jonny]

How to measure your electric power consumption.................Lick fingers and stick in socket

in the 1964 asnzs standards that was a valid way to check for mains voltage present on exposed wiring I shit you not!!!!

you can look up the standards authority at the igovt web site and view it our tutor showed us all the funny things in the electrical regs when I was at tech but that was the most bizzar.

[professor_jonny]

I did have a 4 way power socket on my tv and it has a socket labelled master when current is drawn from that plug it turns on the other sockets supplying power to the other 3 good invention but it did not survive a lightning storm.

might be worth in investing in for TV's and computers for those wishing to save a little of the environment ?

http://www.mitre10.co.nz/shop/electrica ... rd_122671/

http://www.ji.com.au/products/PT9778/

https://sites.google.com/site/ema1power ... or-sockets

[xman]

in the 1964 asnzs standards that was a valid way to check for mains voltage present on exposed wiring I shit you not!!!!

you can look up the standards authority at the igovt web site and view it our tutor showed us all the funny things in the electrical regs when I was at tech but that was the most bizzar.

I remember when I was building my one tonner, it was a ground up rebuild, I got hold of the Australian Design Rules so i could build it "to the book". There are heaps of regulations still current such as " the exhaust can not blow up into the faces of the horses". One the power saving bit though i really have trouble when people say turn off the TV because it wastes power in standby. To me if you seriously want to save power use the washing machine once less per week. That washing machine used once will use more power than your TV in standby for close to a year but I guess the real part I'm opposed to is the actual waste in man hours required to reset all the time keeping the TV has that needs to be reset after you power it completely off. The way I see it is electricity powered devices are there to save man hours so why not use it for such purposes?.

[Dan Dar3]

@xman
Ah, the good old days when no one was turning off lights when leaving the room... oh wait, we're still doing that

Look, the whole point of the thread was not telling people to religiously turn off devices, but how to find out how much each device / they consume and in the end pay for. I understand where you're coming because you're producing your own electricity, but 99.999% of us don't, we buy it and we pay for it each kWh at a time. The point was not to religiously go around and turn off devices just for the sake of it - although judging by the commercials during the recession for "pay as you go / top-up electricy meters" I'd say some should really do.

@professor_jonny
That's one of the points and this is how this thread spawned from the other thread - on how much an older wi-fi router consumed vs a new one.

Obviously when it comes to TVs and home entertainments you're not going to throw 1000$ away to save 9W, but if you knew how much your TV draws on or standby, might help you justify it when you want to buy a new / larger TV.

The standby eliminators / energy saving extensions - that's the sort of thing I wanted to discuss here, see what people found useful and what not so we all share the information. Each will take whatever they will find useful.

[xman]

No Dan , not bagging anyone out. I do use power I pay for in suburbia and produce my own at the farm so I see both sides and I get to test stuff out through necessity, it's just that so much power saving leans towards lights and turning things off in standby and I'm just saying that isn't really achieving anything of substance really. However, night time savings are easier to achieve but it only is 8% of the average power bill content. To anyone ever thinking of going a solar setup may I suggest saving the cash and going a battery setup for you lights. Grab a 10-20 amp smart battery charger that you plug in the wall to charge the batteries and charge the batteries when your power is cheap, out here it's called "Off Peak" and the power is 1/3 the price. Use this battery power to power your lighting in the house at night and even your T.V.can run quite well on the batteries using an inverter. This setup become apparent to me when I found it cost over $1200 for my solar setup down the farm to charge up the same batteries I could charge here on a charger in about two hours and cost near nothing especially during off peak times. Set it up using a timer and you are required to do near nothing.

[retromonger]

Human behavior is the biggest waste in Energy. not any electric System.

Its quite disturbing seeing people from the street into houses and realising how many people watch the same bull...
Quite simple solution would be to setup a big Ass video projector in the middle of the Street and put them sucker in front of it.
But no. Every sucker has to consume with his own TV set.

My old CRT was a cubic meter of a waster. I think up to 6 Watts Standby and up to 160W. 80cm (ca. 38 inch? )
My new TV uses about 50W in the highest setting i need (Back-lit and stuff), standby 0,2W.
No Need to cut of from Power supply anymore.

Im not onto solar stuff. I just dont think you can generate a constant stream of Energy.
Too much waggle in supply.
Some goes for Wind.

What need to be done is updating old Hardware( replace, optimize) and just change your demands.

[Dan Dar3]

@xman
I agree that some might benefit from dual (day/night) electricity meters - the place I used to rent a few years back had an electric heated shower (storage) and storage heaters, and they could save you quite a bit of money to run them at night. Energy here in Ireland is around 20c (euro) and half that, 10c (euro) for night usage. At the same if you don't have any serious use overnight, it's not really worth much - installing or reverting back to normal meter might cost around 180 euro, and the night hours start around 23pm/00am till 8am/9am whether it's winter/summer.

Not sure I agree on the energy saving lights though. My mom (65) asked me to change a light on the porch outside, and she asked me why are we buying the more expensive energy saving bulb. And then I asked her, do you remember when you last changed that light and she couldn't remember that was a few years ago. And I said, exactly, cause they last longer. And then I explained, look you're keeping this light on every night for around 10 hours. With a normal incandescent bulb that is 1kWh a day, 365 days, around 10c / kWh, totals to 36.5 euro a year. With an energy saving light you pay 5 euro for the bulb itself and then 5 times less energy, 7.3 euro. I don't know, to me it sounds like a simple decision to make.

[Dan Dar3]

@retromonger
I agree newer devices tend to be more energy efficient and that was one of the points, monitor a device how much energy consumes and you can easily make a decision in buying a new one, especially for TVs where some keep them for a few hours a day. I for one stopped using the XBox 360 for Netflix and got a cheap Android box for the same job a while back - Xbox 360 = 90W, Android box = 4W. At work our laptops get "refreshed" every 3 years - old laptop (Intel Core i5, 3rd generation, 60Wh battery) = 2-3h battery life, new laptop (Intel Core i5, 4th generation, 64Wh battery) = 5-6 hours.

If you're thinking home solar, you can follow Xman's post on his house in the bush.
http://www.xbmc4xbox.org.uk/forum/viewt ... ?f=11&t=42

As for grid solar / wind, there is this general misconception that energy can only be stored in batteries - see some links in this thread to some interesting technologies I would say, some already in production.
http://www.xbmc4xbox.org.uk/forum/viewt ... =20#p22844

Germany, not the sunniest place out there, managed to produce 50% of its energy on June 9th using solar. And I would believe it, visited some friends in Frankfurt over Christmas and his neighbour had pretty much the entire roof full with solar panels and my friend said they talked and during summer months he was selling energy back into the grid.

"Germany has set a new record, with solar power providing 50.6% of its electricity in the middle of the day on Monday June 9th. Solar production peaked that day at 23.1GW. Three days earlier it was 24.2GW between 1 and 2pm, but on the 9th demand was down for a public holiday, allowing the breaking of the psychological 50% barrier."

http://www.iflscience.com/technology/ge ... Q0MEoWm.99

[professor_jonny]

day night metering saves you money but is does not save power.

They work on the principal that the power company gets charged by the mains generation aftlat rate based on the peak domand for the day.
so what the power company shed of everyone's hot water heater at 6pm when you are cooking (or milking those cows) to cut back the peak usage to save you money but it stems from them saving money by being able to control the peak usage.

I don't know if any one has herd of an energy drain ?

It is a simple heat exchanger you put in the waste line from your shower and you pre heat your cold water from it so you use slightly less hot water very cheap to buy and fit and very effective and most can install one them selves if you have under house supply for your shower.

I think 60 % of the heat generated from your shower goes down the drain and this recoups some of that.

Another cool device is a hot water heat pump and in some places it is illegial not to fit one to a new home like in auzzie land in some states.
what it does is take the heat out of the air and puts it in your hot water cyclinder rather than using the electricity to directly heat the water it is the single most effective way of saving power in ones home.
think of it as air con for your hot water lol.
that will be my next large purchase fitting one of them.

[sixties keith]

sticking to electrical use could someone estimate what power grade the xbox would get. similar to what someone would see if buying a new electrical device (eg electrical rating)

[xman]

Well their 276 watts out here at 240 volts and to give some comparison here are a couple of devices running in this house.
Samsung 46" LCD T.V. -260watts
Oven -5000watts
Element on stove - 2300watts
Play Station 2 -50watts
Xbox 360 -203watts
Pinball Machine -210watts
Domestic Pedestal Fan -75watts
Electric Jug -2000watts
Clothes Dryer -1800watts

We are pretty blessed out here as every electrical devise must have this info on it's compliance plate to be sold legally here. Problem is this is the maximum wattage you could expect and not a real perfect reflection as to what it actually uses in it's normal , running state. The Xbox is a fine example of this.
If you have the device's amps listed you can easily convert it to watts by working out like this-

On the Xbox it also has a plate stating 240volts - 1.2 amps so that is 240, (your voltage from your power point), times 1.2 , ( the amps stated)=288watts.
As you can see it isn't exactly the same as the watts stated but I'd put that down to 1.1amps would be under and 1.3 amps would be way over and the wattage figure would have been actually using a watt meter that can give a precise reading, odiously when the Xbox is first booted up when it sucks heaps of power to charge up all those massive power supply capacitors.

[retromonger]

I measured my water boiler.
0,1kW for one cup of tea, five times a day. 182,5kW/year x 0,2725cents per kW= 51€ (60Dollar) a Year.
I bought a thermos kettle for 25€

I want to boil down my power consumption to 1000kW a year.
Its a goal i want to reach by june next year.

New Solar Solution are always welcome, but i still prefer a constant stream of Power in the line.
Im not for Nuclear Powerplant. But the Russians made a great achievement this week. A Plant which more or less is running in infinite mode.
Means there is literally no waste left behind. its all in a cycle. I dont know what exactly happens at Reaktor BN-800 but its a necessary update.

These things have to be build underground. Than its less like to expose to surface.