I had great fun playing with the energy meter that I borrowed from the library. Once I had got it set up -- took about five minutes -- the display told me that the house was using 0.2 kilowatts. No one else was in so this must have been from the display of radio alarms, phone, router etc. Next I had a play around turning appliances on and off. The most shocking thing in the house was the kettle. When I turned it on the display shot up to 2.0 kilowatts. We have not got a tumble dryer but I suspect that if I did turning it on and watching it eat electricity might bring me to tears!
As much as anything else, borrowing and using the smart meter was fun and hopefully it will have helped me save a bit of money.
I was pleasantly surprised to hear from a friend that all of the energy meters from the Central library are currently on loan and there is a waiting list.
3 comments:
Obviously Kettles, toasters and anything that heats (like immersion/fan heater or electric oven) will use a lot of power, but e.g. a kettle is only for a short time, so in that case not much energy overall. Our kettle is more like 3kw, but if say it boils a cup of water in a couple of minutes is only 0.1kWh.
The background level can be just as bad. 200W on 24/7 is ~5kWH/day or half my average daily use.
The tumble dryer is 220 volt, so it would not plug into the meter. So that will save you some nightmares :-)
If you just dry your laundry and clothes on a clothes drying rack like this one that is set up under a ceiling fan you will have saved a ton of energy by not using the clothes dryer at all.
Nice post. Energy Meters are available in our libraries as well, I used one and now I have my TV/DVD/Wii on a timer which shuts off during the night. Not sure what its saving me, I'll need to calculate it but timers are excellent ways to do it, assuming you don't have a clock in your dvd player or whatever that gets reset. Saving energy is easy with a couple of bucks spent on timers and a meter!
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