Power Crazy

House move

2009-03-23T15:57:00.000-07:00

Okay, this will throw my stats into confusion. About 2 weeks ago, I moved house, which means I have to start again to see what the usage is in the new house and create new targets based on that.

Actually, this is quite interesting. The new house is rented, so I have limited scope in improvement. I comes with an A-rated fridge/freezer and some other A-rated appliances. However, the fridge/freezer's compressor seems to be on most of the time, so whether that causes more problems that our old one, I don't know.

I'll start baselining in a few weeks, once all of the stuff is moved out of the old house. I must say though, I checked the usage of electricity in the old house a week ago, and since I moved out, leaving the rest of the family, the usage there is down a good 25%... hmm...

2008 usage graph

2009-01-09T01:37:00.001-08:00

Right at the start of 2009, I sent in my meter reading so I could get the usage graph for 2008. This graph is the same as those shown in earlier postings.

The graph can be seen below:

I was impressed with the result, even though the final average kWh was over the 10kWh/day I was targetting.

In November & December 2007, the average daily usage was approximately 15.5kWh and 14kWh. Last year, those same averages were 11 and 11.5 - a great reduction in my book.

Given progress made so far, I would expect the early 2009 usage to be below the same period last year - things will start getting more tricky from about April, although hopefully I'll be able to take advantage of some of the things I have done in the autumn to help reduce the usage there to the original 10kWh/day target

Billing Progress

2008-11-11T03:31:00.000-08:00

Received the bill for the quarter the other day - 986 kWh over the course of 97 days (July 28 to November 2). This averages out at 10.16kWh/day - which is nicely on course for the (original) target I had.

In addition, I now have a difference between last year's usage and this year, as can be seen in the graph below.

November was my biggest month of usage last year, I already am reasonably confident that we'll easily beat the usage in 2007.

As for the cost, well as mentioned in an earlier post, the unit costs have risen sharply so in financial terms, I'll probably end up paying more than last year :(

Some progress over the month

2008-11-02T01:58:00.000-07:00

Over the month, habits are forming. Lights are being switched off when not in use, the dishwasher is on the 'Eco' setting, and only put on when full. The washing machine is fully loaded and the iron is used for essential use only.

This has made for a reasonably good month. Even as the nights draw in, when usage normally goes up, the usage in October was stable compared to September, at around 286kWh - just over 9kWh/day.

However, one thing probably helped more than most - the fact that for a few days this month, I was on my own in the house and being out at work all day, I used far less than would normally be used. Below are the last 7 days usage figures

26 October 2008 - 8.576
27 October 2008 - 6.179
28 October 2008 - 5.234
29 October 2008 - 4.827
30 October 2008 - 6.676
31 October 2008 - 8.747
01 November 2008 - 15.09

The massive spike for yesterday was disappointing, but expected - it was the 'catch-up' of all things needed, such as the washing, dishes etc. I think they were on far more than in a usual week. However the 55kWh for the week was nice.

As mentioned in my last post, the goals are revised, but I am confident that usage compared to last year for the month of November will be significantly decreased.

In a few days, the next quarterly bill will be produced. This should confirm my own readings and see how I am doing.

Revision of goals

2008-10-06T10:17:00.000-07:00

I turned the heating on in the house on Sunday - a cold snap meant that it needed to be done. The heating is gas central heating, so uses a gas combination boiler to heat the radiators. The same boiler heats hot water.

When the boiler is on, 100W is used - which means that each day, I'll be using an extra 600 watts/day, and probably 1200 watts each day over the weekend.

These are significant amounts. In addition to these, the lighting is on more in winter (most bulbs are energy saving though), and so I expect quite a bit more in usage for them - comparable amounts of 600W per day.

In all, i'm looking at close to 2kW at the weekend and 1.2kW during the week. These are going to blow my savings targets out of the water.

New Goal

So, I have a new aim in mind - to reduce electricity use to below last year levels, but aiming for 10kW/day. Below is the current energy chart from the supplier - I last sent a meter reading in on September 15, which this takes into account.

Note the peak which is coming up in November - that is just shy of 16kWh/day - I wish to be well off that one. What is surprising though is that since I started this blog, my usage is rising!!! I can't explain that one away except for the use of lights.

Actions

Last weekend I used 12kW each day. This does include extended use of the cooker for Sunday roast and some Xbox360 on the Saturday. It appears I have a lot to do.

So, two things to still consider in the short term - Fridge/Freezer & Energy saving dimmable bulbs - I really must get on with it!

Nighttime update

2008-09-15T10:40:00.000-07:00

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:

An LP241 24 Hour Full Electronic Programmer (this is for the central heating/hot water)
An upstairs mains operated (with battery backup) smoke alarm (the EI151 TL device)
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

Timer switch

2008-09-10T10:56:00.000-07:00

I mentioned a couple of days ago, in the General device statistics post, that a timer switch may be useful to reduce the nighttime usage.

I've now bought one for the princely sum of £3.78 off eBay. On my most pessimistic forecast of 20p/kWh, I'll need to save 18.9 kWh to make it pay for itself. The model I went for was a Mercury 24 Hour timer switch (part number 350.103), also known as a MSA24 rotary switch.

After unpacking, it appeared that there were no instructions. Try as I could,

I really struggled to work out how to use it. On the right hand side was a switch (one setting was 'always on', the other was the timer), but it wasn't clear how to set it. Fortunately, by accident I accidently put some force onto the device and the black rim of the dial appeared to depress. Then it was obvious that these black outside bits need to be pushed in for when the device is to be active, and pushed out when not.

I've set the unit to turn off 3 devices (router, devolo powerline adapter and a phone charger) for 8.75 hours each night. These together consume 18.3w/hour (0.159 kWh/night), so it'll be paid for in about 4 months.

It's an experiment, as is everything here. I realise that at present I'm addressing the easy stuff, although these 3 devices are 15% of my night time usage, and are not in use.

The fridge/freezer may need to be next - I've seen some articles on a device called a Savaplug which I may need to read up on. First I need to work out exactly how good/bad the fridge is.

The battle ahead

2008-09-08T01:11:00.000-07:00

My energy supplier provides a graphical view of my energy usage over the year, and compares it against the previous year. This is based on metered readings and then averaged out and smoothened. The company state: We calculate your average daily energy use using your previous meter readings or estimates divided by the number of days billed.

I've logged into my account and pasted the current chart below:

It shows that my target of 10kWh by Christmas looks overly optimistic. Last year, my usage rose significantly in October and November (probably corresponding to greater usage of lighting) getting close to 15kWh/day - that's some reduction I need to make! I can't explain the slight increase in April 2007, but the use over the summer appears constant (ignore the slight increase in August 2008 - the energy company haven't got any meter readings yet, so must be estimating based on last year - I'm pretty sure when they next update the chart, a more accurate value will be charted).

Yesterday, the meter said that we used 12.55kWh, much more than I would have liked, but then the occasional blip cannot be completely eradicated. On more positive news, the usage up to 7am this morning was 1kWh, so some changes are starting to take effect.

Natural Gas Usage

As an aside, I also get a (natural) gas graph, and a combined one for both fuels. The gas usage is a bit more scary:

That's another challenge entirely (this fuel is only used for heating and cooking, so the options are limited).

Cleaning the fridge

2008-09-06T08:38:00.000-07:00

I read on the internet (reference here), that cleaning the reverse of the fridge (or more specifically the coils) is useful in improving the efficiency of the device.

Today's job therefore was to move the fridge/freezer and give it a good clean. Wow, did it need it! Unfortunately I didn't take a picture of the reverse before I started, but it was caked with dust.

The vacuum cleaner really sorted it out and removed copious amounts of dust. It's a job that perhaps needs to be done much more often than I do (this is the first time in 6 years of having the fridge).

This afternoon, I noticed that the fridge was a lot quieter - maybe it's having an effect already? The real test will be looking at the Efergy first thing tomorrow, and find out if the nighttime (midnight-7am) usage is under the usual 1.1kWh.

General device statistics

2008-09-05T08:24:00.000-07:00

Perhaps a Kill-A-Watt device or similar will be better, but below are some devices and the figures I reckon they use in my night time scenario

Upstairs Light	12
Bedroom Light	11
Devolo Powerline Ethernet (Upstairs)	5.5
Devolo Powerline Ethernet (Downstairs)	5.5
Xbox360 Power Brick	2.5
Phone (Upstairs)	4.6	Estimate
Phone (Hall)	9.2	Estimate
Phone (Kitchen)	4.6	Estimate
Netgear DG834PN	8.2
Microwave clock	2.5	Estimate
Cooker clock	2.5	Estimate
Fridge/Freezer	1	Estimate when compressor not being used
Chest Freezer	1	Estimate when compressor not being used
Clock radio	5
Intelliplug	0
Intellipanel	0
Media Center (Standby)	5	Estimate
'Studio Hybrid' PC	1
Other PC	2	(Estimate)

This approximates at 83W for nighttime. I'll need to look how to reduce this. One thought is to put the router, a Devolo powerline adapter and phone charger in the home office onto a timer switch. If I turned off these devices between 11pm and 7am, the 8 hours would save me just over 140W per night (2.8p) - a timer switch is about £5, so it'll take about 6 months to pay for itself.

Overnight usage

2008-09-04T04:45:00.000-07:00

10% of the daily usage occurs during the hours of midnight to 7am. That's 1.1kWh over 7 hours (157w an hour). To me, this seems like a lot - it's the same as one 100w and one 60w bulb burning all night. It's not constant during the night though. The 'low' seems to be about 83w and the high >200w.

So, I am analyzing this and see what I can do. I have to ask myself, what is turned on at night? I was surprised with the result!

Landing light (so my son can find his way to the bathroom) - energy saving, so 12w
Light in his bedroom. Not energy saving as it's a touch lamp. It has a 40w bulb in it, and runs at the lowest setting. Approximately 11w
3 Phones and chargers (one with answerphone).
2x Devolo powerline adapters (one for media center, one for router)
Internet router
Fridge/Freezer and Chest Freezer
Lights on cooker and microwave
Bedside radio alarm clock
Xbox power brick
Media center in sleep mode
Intellipanel and intelliplug on computers

That's 17 items so far! There could be more, but I can't think of them so far.

It is better than a few months ago too - before I started this blog, I wanted to reduce the power usage with the computers and invested in the Intellipanel and Intelliplug. Without them, the 'ambient' usage would be much higher and the number of devices would have been at least 8 more.

The biggest power suck in the nighttime seems to be the fridge/freezer in the kitchen. I've already turned the setting down from 6 to 4 - what's next?

End of month one statistics

2008-09-01T04:51:00.000-07:00

I'vb neen using the Efergy Energy Meter for about a month now. It's my first real indication of whether I am reducing my power consumption.

According to the monitor, I've used 240kWh (this runs from 5th August to yesterday - 26 days). Fortunately for my targets, it's under 10kWh, but given that I was on holiday for 7 days, it's slightly disappointng. The week of the holiday was 37kWh, so taking that out, for the 19 days we were at home, we used 203kWh, which is unchanged from the start of the month.

More encouraging are the weekly figures:

Week 31: 50.9 kWh(August 5 - 8) - av 12.7 kWh/day
Week 32: 37.2 kWh (August 9 - 15) - av 5.3 kWh/day (see this post)
Week 33: 70.5 kWh (August 16 - 22) - av 10 kWh/day
Week 34: 60.8 kWh (August 23 - 29) - av 8.7 kWh/day

The past week has seen a noticeable drop - a surprising one as I think measures are starting to take effect. Of course, the Efergy occasionally loses the link, so hopefully it is recording correctly. The real test is when I receive the quarterly bill in late October.

Power reduction over the month

Here are some of the things I have done this month to reduce power (in addition to those recorded in other posts):

Switching off the upstairs television & digital box from standby (standby uses 12W for these combined). It'll be on standby for at least 22 hours a day, so thats 264W a day.
Turning off lights when not in use (even the energy saving ones). I can't quantify the amount
Boiling the kettle which less water in it

It's all taking effect - and it seems that everyone in the household is helping. I'm encouraged that not only is the 10kWh/day target achieveable, but I'm already getting close.

Energy efficient PC arrived

2008-08-26T07:17:00.000-07:00

The Dell Studio Hybrid arrived today, a couple of days early - looks very nice. It's very compact (as can be seen in the picture below) and should reduce my power usage considerably. Perhaps not the best way of saving money, but does save electricity.

I've attached the machine to my Intellipanel plug. At first, it wouldn't turn on the device properly, but after a reset, it works fine. The intellipanel will turn on and off all of the peripheral with the computer. These are some Microsoft powered speakers (DSS-80 speakers), an LG LCD monitor, an iPaq docking station and a rarely used desk lamp (the lamp is only ever used when at the computer, so this just ensures it's off most of the time).

The estimate is that I'll save 150w for every hour the device is on. I may not be able to accurately measure that, but we'll see.

After plugging it in, I found that I no longer need to use the separate card reader, nor the powered 7 port USB device I had - minimal power savings for the latter, but it all adds up.

Price rises from the power supplier

2008-08-22T08:23:00.000-07:00

I hear today on the news that the prices that I pay for gas and electricity are on the up again today (why is it that we never hear of them falling). My supplier is one of the last big 6 suppliers to raise them, but it does come at the time just before consumption increases. I bet if there are any cuts, they come just before the summer when demand is less.

I have to work with new costs - electricity is up 16% (gas by 26%, but I'm not tracking that as closely). They claim it'll be 62p/day (for both fuels combined) - wow, that's a huge amount (£226 over a year!).

This makes me more determined to reduce usage. It'll make the more expensive unit cost around 20p/kWh and the cheaper unit about 11.5p/kWh

It does help me with my sums though (not that's any reason to increase the price). I can calculate 20p/unit in my head, so I can now work out a daily amount. My target is 10kWh/day, so that's £2/day in electricity - still seems a lot when calculated over a year, but in future I will do more once I've hit my first target.

Power disaster!

2008-08-16T13:01:00.000-07:00

Returned from holiday today to discover a surprisingly high reading on the Efergy over the past week. Each day was approximately 5kWh. 5kWh equates to 208w/hour which, given that most things were off, was high.

Then the culprit became apparent. The media center computer power supply had failed - it was still drawing power (and lighting up the blue light on the front of the computer), but no longer correctly powering the computer. It therefore had not turned itself off for much of the holiday (I tracked it down to failing last Sunday 10th, late in the evening).

Apart from losing a lot of TV recordings, it was continually drawing some power (I do not know how much) for a whole week.

Over the holiday, the only items left on were the router (to allow the media center to download guide listings), 2 devolo units, answerphone, fridge/freezer and the chest freezer. Apart from a small amount of lighting which the neighbour would have used to feed the cat, that was it.

So, I haven't managed to find out what the background usage is (well, unless you take 35kWh for a week as it, but I don't believe it is if things were to operate correctly).

This means I need to get a new power supply for the media center PC, well, almost. Because the media center PC was more important than my desktop machine (as it was being replaced), I pulled the item out of that machine and at least got the media center playing again.

Tomorrow I'll need to get a new power supply for my desktop, as that requires a modern-ish one. Given that my new desktop (44w max load) will arrive before the end of the month, I will chose carefully as this power supply will really be for my wife's machine.

New energy efficient PC on order

2008-08-08T03:50:00.000-07:00

I've been considering (separate from this electricity consumption adventure) getting a new PC. The current one is a few years old, big and bulky and I no longer have the time (or desire) to build my own.

Earlier in the week I noticed that my wife's machine (even older) was terribly slow in starting, responding and generally operating too.

I'm in the IT world and know a thing or two about configuring PCs and removing programs/files on them to speed them up. I couldn't seem to make much headway with it.
Also, my son was using the machine more and more to view Lego sites, Youtube of Lego Star Wars and other 'fun' things, and we wanted to get a bit more control over what he did.
Solution - get a new machine.

I don't need the world's best machine. Nor do I need one I can upgrade - a general purpose one will do. It's for my email, occasional Visual Studio, download of Podcasts from iTunes and such like.

It being near the start of the month, I felt a bit flush with money and went for a Dell Studio Hybrid machine. This could be described as a desktop based Laptop machine - it uses laptop (low energy) components in the desktop case. Maximum load it will draw 44w. It seems ideal under the auspices of this project too - when replacing anything, go for the low energy usage item, so long as it will do the job.

It's due to arrive on August 28 - after then, I guess I'm using about 150w less per hour of use. Okay, that'll mean 15 years to pay for it from energy saving alone (until the cost of electricity goes up). My old machine will cascade to my wife (but also now feature multiple logins, one for my son). Her old machine will be broken up and parts disposed of (some bits will be reused, others given away or sold on eBay).

It also gives us a space boost - the Dell Studio Hybrid is tiny and will sit on the desk, rather than to the side of it.

Devices to monitor

2008-08-02T10:34:00.000-07:00

In my home, there are a surprising number of items which use power. These include:

3 desktop computers (one of which is a media center). All of these are a few years old
Fridge/Freezer and a Chest Freezer
Usual kitchen items - kettle, toaster, microwave, electric oven, portable radio
All the bits which come with computers - speakers, USB devices etc
Lighting - includes a number of energy saving bulbs, but some places where these can't be used, such as lights with dimmer switches)
Telephones
Other stuff like vacuum cleaner, electric iron
TV, video, DVD, Xbox

Probably lots more. The point is that only when you start to look, you realize how many items are in use in the home.

My aim isn't to replace all of these with energy saving appliances - the costs of doing so would far outweigh the gains in reduction of electricity. However, we can use them more carefully, and do things to reduce their consumption (or more accurately to reduce our use of them to decrease consumption)

Usage monitoring

2008-08-01T07:10:00.000-07:00

To monitor the usage, I needed to purchase an item which would help me learn about how much devices consume.

I've chosen the Efergy Wireless energy meter (it was a final choice between that one and the Owl), which I've bought off eBay today. It should arrive in a few days, just before I take a week holiday.

I'm looking at consumption, not price or CO2 emissions here, but this device supports them all. One reason for getting it now is to measure how much electricity consumed when no one is at home - the only usage should be background stuff. I wonder, how much does the house cost before we do anything?

I saw this unit demonstrated by a friend of mine a couple of months back. I think their usage will be a lot less than mine, but this is a good way of finding out!

Cutting down electricity usage

2008-07-29T12:05:00.000-07:00

I decided to author this blog as I have found myself obsessed with reducing my electricity bill.
Over the past few years, the cost of electricity in the UK has risen sharply. I am now paying 17.33p for the first 200 kWh, and then 9.93p afterwards.

My last bill which I saw today, spanned 8 May - 28 July (81 days), was over £100 and averaged out at 10.71kWh/day

The aim therefore, is to reduce consumption in the household - I remember my bills being closer to £45/quarter - I may not be able to do much about the pricing, but I can do something on the consumption.

I have a target of under 10 kWh by Christmas. I'm anticipating this to be difficult, as in the winter usage tends to go up as people use more lighting and tend to stay home more - also, I have lots of items that use electricity.

To be honest, I've no clue which items use the most power, except for lightbulbs. I know a 100w lightbulb, left on for 10 hours will use 1kWh, and based on my current charges, that'll cost 17p (I'm going to opt for the more pessimistic pricing). Fortunately I only have a couple of non-energy saving bulbs, so am already saving. Because I've already changed these, they're not going to influence the target.