Interesting....
Today is overcast, but still bright. No need to use electric lights. And it's cool outside. No reason to run the furnace or air-conditioning.
Sounds like a good time to start switching off circuit breakers for find phantom loads.
Pretty much everything in the house was off, yet I was still using over 50 watts.
I unplugged 3 timers, used for a light and my aquariums.
With everything off in the house, it was very quiet. I could now hear a faint buzz from my furnace. So, I flipped off the furnace circuit-breaker, and my wattage dropped by 6!
Who knew a furnace has a phantom load of 6 watts?!
My dishwasher has a 1 watt phantom load.
My sump-pump circuit has a 2-watt phantom load. There is a power strip down there with a couple things plugged into it. I will have to crawl down there and see which it is.
One thing that I forgot about is the the smoke detectors in my house are HARDWIRED for electricity, with battery back-up!
That circuit (which also includes my wife's alarm clock) take 6 watts.
In the end, I was able to get my power down to 5 watts.
Of course, the TED receiver uses power. I plugged that into a Kill-a-watt, which read 2 watts. The receiver itself is marked as 1.5 watts, but the Kill-a-watt only does whole numbers.
That leaves 3 watts left over.
If the receiver uses 2 watts, I don't think it is a stretch for the transmitter to use 3.
Keep in mind that this is all done over a computer wireless network. My computer is a laptop, which can run on batteries. My wireless router and internet access can not. I ran a 100-foot extension cord to the detached garage, where I ran the those items off the 48V battery backup UPS I have there.
So, that's it. All energy use finally accounted for.
Now that I know where it's all going, I can start to take steps to see where else it might be possible to trim down a few more watts.
