Background electricity usage

I've checked mine alarm uses 15w continually, door openers minimal whole garage is 9 watts with nothing on. That's with two security lights, interior lights are on a PIR, string of Philip hue outside lights and two garage door openers.

Boiler controls the pump speed depending on load
 
Really interesting post - we have 0.7kw background load (ie at night time when we turn all the lights off and devices, we still have a 0.7 draw).

I think this is as low as we can get (eg four freezers, two fridges, plenty of devices) - could probably get to 0.5kw but beyond that starts to get diminishing returns...
 
My alarm is about 8W (mostly keypad backlights I expect) and garage roller shutter 1.6W. Compared to the CCTV, servers and network kit its nothing.

I've even checked the boiler plus its controller, thermostats and they are pretty low. So for me other than a shredder and a few items like turning off rarely used Amazon Fire boxes (3W each but 24x7) and reducing some use of lights (LED strip lights seem to be the least efficient vs light output) there isn't a lot I can do to reduce usage.
 
katie279 said:
Really interesting post - we have 0.7kw background load (ie at night time when we turn all the lights off and devices, we still have a 0.7 draw).

I think this is as low as we can get (eg four freezers, two fridges, plenty of devices) - could probably get to 0.5kw but beyond that starts to get diminishing returns...
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0.7kw as in 700w? If so that's extremely high. My overnight usage is much less than that even with aircon on.
 
CaptainRAVE said:
We hover between 150-300w minimum draw. The time you add up fridge/freezer, alarm system, cctv, router etc it all adds up. I’ve unplugged everything else. Now I’ve permanently turned off our hot tub our energy bill will probably go down.
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That's about the same as ours, the lowest I've seen it go was about 90 watts, normally it's closer to 250 as it seems that the fridge/freezer spend a fair bit of time cycling on.

Possibly the biggest waste draw I've found so far was the treadmill, it looks like they went cheap on the design somewhere, as it's standby use is a constant 20watts which puts it something like 10-20 times what the TV's use in standby (my guess is that the little speakers/amp it's got built in are never powered down).
 
andy_mk3 said:
0.7kw as in 700w? If so that's extremely high. My overnight usage is much less than that even with aircon on.
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Yip I know! I have gone around minimising, but trouble is a lot of this is pretty fixed - we have six fridges and freezers, 7-8 network switches, two NAS', etc etc.

Welcome any ideas, but have always struggled to get below this!
 
katie279 said:
Yip I know! I have gone around minimising, but trouble is a lot of this is pretty fixed - we have six fridges and freezers, 7-8 network switches, two NAS', etc etc.

Welcome any ideas, but have always struggled to get below this!
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Are you running a hotel or something lol? Why all the fridges and freezers?

What kind fo hardware are the NAS's?
 
Heh, well we have two full height fridges in the kitchen and two full height freezers (we like our food!).

Then two small freezers for fruit and stuff from the garden - so it sort of pays for itself...!

Synology NAS' x 2 and the 5 bay extension thing also
 
I've just scheduled my NAS to only wake up twice a week for an hour to accept the robocopy job from my home server, that thing takes around 23w sitting there doing nothing as i only use it as a backup, that should help a bit. My home server takes about 12w so i think i can justify keeping that on.

Now i need to work out if i can do anything about my network switch, it's a really old netgear 24 port gigabit switch and uses 19w measured at the wall, not sure how much more efficient newer switches are?
 
Hmm, yeah we use our NAS throughout the day (photos, files etc) but have it hibernating through the night.

Good shout re switches, I'd be interested to know if newer ones are better - lots of ours are 10-15 years old - also been looking for an excuse for PoE ones.....
 
Just had a quick google and it does seem some newer switches are more power efficient, i found this table in this article

ManufacturerModelNumber of PortsMaximum Power Consumption
TP-LinkTL-SG10883.3W
NETGEARJGS5242419.9W
LinksysLGS1242411.9W
Tp-LinkTL-SG10484832.3W

It would be worth me getting 2x TP-Link 8 port switches by the looks of it rather than running my old netgear one as i don't use all 24 ports, i'll have to go and count but i think i only need like 10 or 11 ports.

If you start using PoE though it all goes out of the window as they seem to suck a lot of power from playing with them at work :(

Some quick maths suggests at 50p a unit my switch is costing me £83 a year but if i could make do with 1 TP link 8 port i'd only use £14! Given the switch is only 18 quid it'd pay for itself in a couple of months.
 
So when the house is in doing nothing mode after a few tactical unpluggings of stuff really not needed background is 94w going to 134 when the fridge kicks in.
 
My background excluding fridge is around 140w, which consists of mostly two servers (6 core, 32gb ram, 2ssd esxi server and a 3800x, 64gb ram, 8x 4tb disks, 3 fan and nvme sdd unraid server) plus standby devices like TV, amp, modem, router, house phone, maybe 6 or 7 Alexa's, hive themostat, hive hub, microwave, oven clock, all the usb chargers left plugged in and door bell. Around 80w is those 2 servers. My fridge/freezer averages to about 60w per hour so 200w total background including fridge.

For me it was worth turning off the alarm since I didn't know the code, easy 10% saving from background (just had to endure the battery backup sounder for a bit), same with the garage door opener which mine was around 4w. I don't pay for a TV licence so there was also the powered splitter in the loft for all the coax points that could be turned off. A light up mirror the previous guy wired in (wave activation). Removed my small 8 port switch and relocated router to use ethernet ports on that (sacrificed slight WiFi performance but even in the furtherest place I can push 70mbps so it's fine). Removed a lighwave hub and light switch I was using to be lazy. Rewiring my various pc setups so they are all killable with a single wall switch is saving around 30w of standby power across things like multiple speakers, printers, scanners, shredder, tower, monitors etc). Individually it doesn't sound like a lot but it all adds up to around a 35% saving on 24/7 use which at October prices for me is saving around £250 a year.
 
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I'm using 40w during the night, fridge, alarm, router, smart stat, 1 TV, 3 night lights, £8.25 a year at 55p KWh. bigger savings to be had on how we cook and heat our home.

Edit: that's per hour, so around around £100 a year sorry. 40w per hour from 9pm till 9am then I get solar power through the day.
 
Mickie said:
I'm using 40w during the night, fridge, alarm, router, smart stat, 1 TV, 3 night lights, £8.25 a year at 55p KWh. bigger savings to be had on how we cook and heat our home.
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Biggest one for most I bet is avoiding takeaway!
 
Yeah be careful when trying to save energy with a slow cooker, they can be up to 200w and if that's running for 10 hours while you're in work it'll be 2KwH so would probably be quite a bit cheaper to run the oven for 45 minutes instead.

Slow cookers are great and i love how they cook but i don't think they're the amazing money saving thing people are touting them as, best off getting an air fryer in terms of efficiency.
 
Yea, our oven is about 2.5kW, so if we take 10 minutes to heat up, and then cycle the element 50/50 for the remaining 35 minutes, it totals less than 1.2kWh for the 45 minute time period.
 
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