Base electricity usage

[seattleite]

I was wondering the other day what our base electricity usage was, that is, how much electricity we are using when we are doing nothing in our house. And guess what, it's easy to figure out because we were gone over Christmas last year and then again in late January.

The time we left over Christmas we just turned off our furnace completely and the time in January we left it on at like 55 degrees or something. Besides the furnace, which is gas BTW, the only things our house that should have been using electricity were: the CFL porch light, the fridge, and the chest freezer. I've in the past used a Kill-A-Watt on all of our plug in electronics and determined that they all use minimal electricity (far below a watt) when not in use. No standard hot water heater in the house, it's one of those instant hot thingies.

So, this is what I found:

Our electricity usage in our empty house without the furnace is about 5 kWh per day, with the furnace it's about 9 kWh. Both of those values seem very high. Do they seem high to you?

5 kWh a day is 200 watts an hour. What the hell could be sucking down all of that electricity? It couldn't possibly be the fridge, right, though to be fair the fridge seems like it's 20 years old.

[bobechs]

Hmmm...  maybe your neighbors are liberating more than your other neighbors' wi-fi.

[franklin w. dixon]

Even a brand-new high efficiency refrigerator uses ~1kwh per day and an old one can easily be 5 times that much. So yes, it is the refrigerator/freezer. Electrical use is higher when the furnace is on because they are fighting a higher temperature differential.

[human]

You may have a fan circulating air or for a dryer vent that is constantly on. Our dryer vent was always on, I turned it off and use it when the dryer is on (once a week). That seemed to lower electricity usage.

[forummm]

Do you have a cable box or DVR? A receiver? Those use a lot of juice even when "off". Computers you leave on?

[BlueMR2]

Doesn't seem too ridiculous to me.  We run around 10-12 kwh.  I've never done a base load check, but we switched to only using our CFL/LED lights , microwave instead of oven, and from power guzzling desktop computers all the time to laptops occasionally.  We now run 9-11 kwh...  I figure the furnace and furnace use it all.

[bacchi]

That does seem high. We used 3.5 kwh/day last month and that includes desktop, laptops, lights, and one evening of AC to dehumidify.

It's probably the fridge. Have you used the kill-a-watt on it for a few weeks?

[RobFIRE]

2 bed apartment, 2 adults. Averaging 5 kWh a day of peak usage and a bit under 1 kWh in the 7 off peak hours overnight in summer. So 6 kWh / day total excluding night storage heaters used in winter. No air conditioning use. We have no gas so figures include cooking and water heating for showers. I don't have specific figures for when we've been away from home, though I'd expect it to be under half that value as most of our energy use would be cooking and water heating I would think.

So if you're at 5 kWh / day that's higher than my figures, though we only have a single combined fridge freezer. After a quick look, a new combined fridge/freezer in the UK has energy usage approaching 1 kWh / day. If your appliances are old, and American fridges tend to be large ones as well, then around 2 kWh / day for each is not surprising. Have you inspected the coils on the back to check they are free of dirt & fluff etc. that does reduce efficiency?

[seattleite]

Do you have a cable box or DVR? A receiver? Those use a lot of juice even when "off". Computers you leave on?

Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope.

Like I said, very little plugged in. We keep Mac laptop adapters plugged in but when they are not plugged into a laptop they take essentially no electricity. We have a TV but it's by far less than a watt when off. I've used a Kill-A-Watt on everything that I've personally plugged in. It's hard to do on the fridge but now I'm thinking I need to (and annoy my land lord until he replaces it).

[johnny847]

That seems pretty high to me, but I don't know how much energy an old fridge can suck up. On a day I'm not running intensive simulations on my computers for research, I use about 5-6 kWh (but of course, this is a 600 sq ft apartment).

I'd use that kill a watt on your fridge.

[slugline]

You'll get your answer when you finally get around to putting the fridge on the Kill-A-Watt!

[Spork]

I can tell you that old fridges/freezers I've measured were in the 7kwh per day.  Old being circa 1980s/1990s.

[obstinate]

Seems pretty high. My house uses 10-ish kWH while we are living in it.

[teen persuasion]

Probably the fridge -when we replaced an old fridge our electric usage dropped noticeably.

We are using about 6 KWh per day lately, and my DH regularly turns on the PC as soon as he wakes up, so it runs all day (whether anyone actually uses it or not) until I shut it off before bed.  We've got TVs, VCRs, Wii, assorted electronic devices charging, and lots of lights scattered around our big old farmhouse.  We are down to 2 kids at home, from 5, but usage has been fairly even.

[FerrumB5]

9 kWh per day on average here in Chicago. A lot of it comes from furnace fan (probably 0.5 kW) running during everlasting winter, and a lot of it surely comes from 10-15 y/o fridge that we acquired with the house purchase. With $0.12-0.14 per kWh it's not really bothering me