Efergy energy monitor

[Hawgfan]

Has anyone bought the Efergy electricity monitor that MMM talks about Iin "chasing out your electrical demons"?

I did.  The monitor says I am using 0.12 kilowatts per hour with nothing on.  I am asuing this is my smoke detectors.  Does this seem normal?  I can definitely tell when the fridge kicks on and other power users in the house

Thanks
Jim
 

[MelodyG]

I have an Efergy monitor (love it!), and found the same thing.  Here's what I discovered:

The desktop computer was sucking a ton of juice while it was "hibernating"
The WiFi router was taking some power
The TV was sucking power even when it was off.

We started keeping the computer totally off unless in use, and hooked the wifi router and tv to an outlet with a timer that shut off at night.

[Hawgfan]

Thanks Melody for sharing your learnings.  Yea I have made a lot of changes too (led light bulbs, sold my garage fridge, removed outdoor landscape lighting, stopped using dryer, new surge protectors, etc) 

What do about the 0.12 kwh?  Does that seem normal for smoke detectors?  I can tell when the fridge kicks on because is jumps to 0.36 kwh.  Lights don't use much since they are led.  The coffee maker and AC really spike it

[Syonyk]

Start flipping breakers until you find out what circuit is using it, and work it out from there.

120W seems a bit high, but it's not firmly in the realm of "things I'd spend too much time caring about."

Everything in your house is going to be using some amount of standby current.  The fridge, the furnace, the computers, the TV, the smoke detectors, the oven, the microwave...

It's also possible that the zero calibration on the current sensor is a bit off - you could cut all the breakers and see if it still shows a reading.

[MelodyG]

What Syonyk said!  I used a combinations of flipping breakers and my killowatt device to find my electric vampires.

[Hawgfan]

Thank You both!