Whole house power consumption

I Love the look of an x10 network system. But alleays wonders how much all the adapters and an atom based pc would use compared to the savings of standby items.

Basically you can set it upto switch things on and off at certain times. You can program things like a night button that turns everything you wont need of at the plug in a single switch and switch it all back on the same way.
 
I work for a power company, and had the fascinating opportunity of spending a couple of days with our independent energy efficiency team and hear them advise people about how to use less.
If your home's idling higher than you think then it's probably an issue with the fridge/freezer thermostat, or your central heating pump was running at the time. Fridges and freezers apparently use less if there is less air inside (ie, more stuff) with a little gap towards the back. As previously mentioned, if there's a fault with either of them the compressor could be running all the time, which makes a big difference. Also sometimes it's easy to forget the garden, and I've heard of people with 800w pond pumps running 24/7 (because they simply thought most expensive = better).
Failing that, check that the monitor is corresponding to the actual meter reads. Energy monitors tend to use a magnetic clamp to measure energy use, which isn't quite as accurate as the meter itself will be.
 
Can someone tell me how these things work?

I live in a student flat, we have to pay for electricity obviously (and according to this site I'm a 70 year old student)

How does it read how much electricity were using etc? Will I have permission to plug it into what ever it needs to be plugged into? :p
 
RoachycaL said:
Can someone tell me how these things work?

I live in a student flat, we have to pay for electricity obviously (and according to this site I'm a 70 year old student)

How does it read how much electricity were using etc? Will I have permission to plug it into what ever it needs to be plugged into? :p
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You have to clamp the meter around the live connection supply coming from the meter into the consumer box. Generally, if you have access to the main meter you'll be ok :)
 
Howard said:
That's expensive, you can get the bog standard white one that a certain electrical component retailer slash competitor whose name may or may not begin with M sell, on a certain auction site for about a tenner. Works like a charm :)
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I bought it elsewhere for £5 about 5/6 years ago :), in 'b grade' type stock
 
I'd be interested to know how much power my iMac uses, but I doubt anyone in this thread has an iMac and one of those energy-reading-meter-thingy-ma-bobs?!
 
when I worked for an electricity company, Eon bought our company and migrated our customers to their company.

a few of us in the IT team went to their Nottingham branch for a chat with their IT directors. one of them was telling us about problems they'd had in the past where migrated customers had gone to them without MPANs, or some with just MPANs

He said there were around 200,000 homes/businesses getting 100% free electricity and gas, because they had absolutely no record where these properties were, they can't disconnect them, and they can't bill them!

Madness!


Thinking back, wish I'd transferred to them, and 'migrated' my account to their records :cool:
 
Try a PC that draws 1.1KW at the wall o.o

I read a review of a Tri-SLI PC that drew 1.1kw (not the rating of the PSU, it actually drew 1.1kw continously)
 
Judging by the speed of the disk in the meter I think ours is on a go slow, my 40 watt reading doesn't appear to even turn the disk so I guess it must be that gigantic magnet that the previous owners fitted on the meter
 
bledd. said:
He said there were around 200,000 homes/businesses getting 100% free electricity and gas, because they had absolutely no record where these properties were, they can't disconnect them, and they can't bill them!
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I've been in a rented house for the past 6 months (between selling our old house and moving into our new house next week).

When we moved in, we had a hell of a job finding out who supplied the gas, eventually it turned out that our property wasn't correctly registered, and the previous tenants had got away with about £1000 in gas bills (because the company didn't know which house was using the gas). Unfortunately by this stage it was too late for us to get away with anything and we've had to pay our own gas bill :D

The gas company even said they weren't going to bother pursuing the previous tenants.
 
bledd. said:
it has batteries :)

jamief, you could pretty much make up your first reading :o
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The problem was we phoned them (can't remember who, maybe Scottish Gas) with the meter readings and it turned out a little later that there was some issue with the registration of the gas meter to our property. I think the gas meter outside our house was registered to some non-existent property or something! Lesson learned - next time wait for a bill to drop through the door before phoning gas companies :D
 
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