My electricity consumption is higher than I would expect.
I have an old-school turn-y dial meter, so I can measure the power consumption of the house at any given time.
I tried going round and turning everything off.
- All the lights, obviously.
- All computers and other charging items.
- All sockets.
- All appliances. (incl. e.g. fridge and oven off at the socket)
- Boiler controls (actually heating is gas, but I guess there's pumping and clocks, etc.)
Now I wouldn't expect to actually get to zero – I'd expect there to be some trivial things that don't have switches (things like hard-wired thermostat controls, or a door bell, etc. etc. etc.), but I'd expect to be able to get damn close. 5s of Watts, maybe?
The lowest I could get was around 0.17kW. Which seems much higher than I would expect?
How low would you expect to be able to get your power consumption if you could turn everything off at the plug?
House details:
- UK, London.
- 3 bed, 2 story house.
- Early 1950's construction.
- Gas heating
Best Answer
Turning things off will not stop the power usage on many electronic devices, tv’s microwaves or anything with a touch pad to turn it on consumes power to keep the electronics alive watching for a button push. Even power supplies to computers and cell phone chargers when not plugged in consume a small amount of power. How can you tell if your “wall wart” plug in transformer is using power? Feel it if it is warm or warmer than the surrounding area it is consuming power how much ??? It varies cable boxes computer routers are all things that add up. If everything is unplugged most homes can get down to 15-20w and these are hard wired transformers for door bells and furnaces. So you should be able to get down much further based on testing I Have done for customers.