Timeline for How to find electric device(s) driving a high electric bill?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
34 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Aug 26, 2021 at 16:56 | vote | accept | CommunityBot | ||
| Aug 7, 2021 at 13:02 | history | edited | gatorback | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Aug 3, 2021 at 23:25 | answer | added | user122950 | timeline score: 11 | |
| Jul 28, 2021 at 22:31 | history | edited | user122950 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
additional context.
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| Jul 28, 2021 at 22:26 | history | edited | user122950 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
additional context.
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| Jul 28, 2021 at 22:01 | history | edited | user122950 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jul 28, 2021 at 21:48 | comment | added | user122950 | Thanks for all these comments. I'll answer some. correct meter/house? I checked the numbers, they're ours. Estimate based on prior year? Interesting, but the numbers in bill match meter. Ceiling fan? I suppose it could somehow draw 10x what it should, but I'd think I'd smell it. ;) Fridge or well pump running constantly? I sit right on top of them and they're not, cycling normally. Septic pump? Need to look for the book, but likely 1/2 to 3/4 hp. Should be about same load as the well pump. | |
| Jul 28, 2021 at 21:35 | comment | added | Mark Lakata | I'm not sure where you got your graph from, but you might want to make sure that the electric company is monitoring the right house. I have a friend that recently discovered her condo meter was accidentally swapped with her neighbor's, and she has been paying for their electricity for years. | |
| Jul 28, 2021 at 17:55 | comment | added | J... | @SpehroPefhany I'm sure I have dozens of such vampire loads in my house and my idle power consumption drops to around 500W at night, including the main HVAC blower running 24/7 on low at 450CFM, a fiber modem that's always on, a 4-bay NAS with 5400RPM drives that are always on and spinning, a WiFi router that's always on, an air filter that's always on, and around seven IoT nodes always on. 1kW of vampire load would need thousands of devices, not a mere hundred. | |
| Jul 27, 2021 at 20:17 | comment | added | Spehro 'speff' Pefhany | @Mark I once counted all the AC adapters, printers, scanners, TVs with soft-off etc. we had plugged in 24/7, it was over 100. I'm just suggesting it could be a whole bunch of smaller vampire loads rather than one big one. I agree it seems a bit unlikely, but.. | |
| Jul 27, 2021 at 20:14 | comment | added | Mark | @SpehroPefhany, the mystery load is 1 kilowatt (8 amps, if it's on a 120-volt line). That's a hundred times the size of the largest idle load I've seen, or twenty times the size of the full-load draw of a laptop power supply. | |
| Jul 27, 2021 at 17:36 | comment | added | Spehro 'speff' Pefhany | Some devices such as the laptop power supplies may draw significant "vampire power" even when nominally off. A plug-in power meter (eg. Kill A Watt) that shows real (not just apparent) power would help with things that have plugs and are not wired in permanently. | |
| Jul 27, 2021 at 13:55 | answer | added | nanoman | timeline score: 1 | |
| Jul 27, 2021 at 12:34 | comment | added | nanoman | "We're even drawing more electrical than when we were here last fall" -- I somewhat disagree -- the average usage appears very nearly equal for the two occupancies, with a higher variability of usage in the fall. | |
| Jul 27, 2021 at 12:01 | comment | added | nanoman | To confirm: The black curve is outdoor temperature on the right-hand scale? | |
| Jul 27, 2021 at 10:32 | answer | added | Vilx- | timeline score: 1 | |
| Jul 26, 2021 at 20:13 | answer | added | stoj | timeline score: 2 | |
| Jul 26, 2021 at 19:45 | answer | added | MTA | timeline score: 4 | |
| Jul 26, 2021 at 18:37 | comment | added | jay613 | Theory: You did something when you arrived to start this behavior. What? Theory A) The ceiling fan stands out in your list as the only continuous thing. The granularity of the graph is much better than daily so there's something continuous causing this. Maybe the fan is defective and drawing more energy than it should? Theory B) The fridge or well pump is defective and running closer to continuously than to the duty cycle you would expect. | |
| Jul 26, 2021 at 17:51 | answer | added | rrauenza | timeline score: 2 | |
| Jul 26, 2021 at 16:35 | comment | added | aaaaa says reinstate Monica | If any answer was useful, please accept it and tell us your findings / what you've learned (you can edit original post with update) | |
| Jul 26, 2021 at 14:22 | comment | added | Brydon Gibson | Is this cabin new (to you) this year? If this is your first summer, the power companies may be making predictive measurements, and will then compensate accordingly in the future. My meter gets checked every other month, and the bills can look weird if the prediction was off from the previous month. This from your last comment "I feel like our meter is registering a summer AC surge" | |
| Jul 26, 2021 at 13:57 | comment | added | J... | If something is wrong with your pressure switch or if your water line has an obstruction it's possible that the well pump is just running non-stop. You may also have a water line leak that is causing your pressure tank no not hold pressure and your well pump to run continuously or mostly continuously. Have you checked that? | |
| Jul 26, 2021 at 12:54 | comment | added | paulj | Feel free to vlog on youtube all this. Bet you'll get 10k views easy. | |
| Jul 26, 2021 at 12:42 | comment | added | Christian | @fraxinus one would think so, but it is not. 1 kW is a contious load, while 1kwh/h is an average over time, e.g. an 2 kW AC that is running 50% of the time. | |
| Jul 26, 2021 at 12:00 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackDIY/status/1419628567890120705 | ||
| Jul 26, 2021 at 11:47 | comment | added | Criggie | Do please keep us updated with your findings as you progress. | |
| Jul 26, 2021 at 11:05 | comment | added | fraxinus | 1kWh/h is just 1kW, isn't it? | |
| Jul 26, 2021 at 10:40 | comment | added | Solar Mike | What is the power of the septic pump and how long is it on for? | |
| Jul 26, 2021 at 10:23 | comment | added | Tonny | My guess is the well-pump or the heating circulator/fan (or both). Water softener could also have more load than you would expect. Especially if it has and internal circulation pump that keeps going all the time. And what about those 2 "box-fans" (whatever those may be?). That is a whole list of always on stuff that may draw more power than you realize. | |
| Jul 26, 2021 at 9:25 | history | became hot network question | |||
| Jul 26, 2021 at 3:58 | answer | added | Harper - Reinstate Monica | timeline score: 42 | |
| Jul 26, 2021 at 1:40 | answer | added | Gil | timeline score: 12 | |
| Jul 26, 2021 at 1:18 | history | asked | user122950 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |