Nighttime update

In an earlier posting, I described all of the devices that I thought were on at night. It was a list of 19 items. This really surprised me at the time.

Yesterday I realized that 3 more items should have been on the list:

1. An LP241 24 Hour Full Electronic Programmer (this is for the central heating/hot water)
2. An upstairs mains operated (with battery backup) smoke alarm (the EI151 TL device)
3. As (2), but for downstairs.

These each approximately consume 1W at night. Not a lot I can do about any of these - safety is, of course, paramount, and hot water/heating is required.

It does mean that I can revise down the estimate i had on the standby power for the Media Center from 5W to 2W.

Timer switch operation

In my last post, I had bought a timer switch for some of the home office products. I'm not completely convinced yet that this is having much of an impact, as the background usage is still about 80W at night. I'm not sure what's happened as it does sucessfully turn off the 3 devices, but my overnight usage has remained consistent. I'm trying to establish what else has changed in the last few days.

Even though the 'background' power usage is relatively constant, the overnight usage is now approximately 1kWh, so that's 10% down. I think a combination of things have helped me here, cleaning the fridge, the timer switch and some general changes of habit.

All things considered, the overall usage is dropping. I'll be taking a meter reading shortly, and hopefully can post some of the results