hypermiling the house

[MetroMPG]

Some Ontario electricity utilities are having a promotion this summer: reduce your consumption by 10% in July & August and you get a 10% credit on the next bill.

Other than trying to remember to shut off lights, I haven't put much thought or effort into reducing home consumption.

My bro in-law bought a kill-a-watt to help him figure out how much he was using/saving.

Prompted me to try a few simple things, and the results were amazing. First I established a 22 kwh / day baseline (over 3 days) by going outside and checking the numbers on the meter at the same time each day. Did this before making any changes. Then I went to town:

• unplugged a second fridge (it's never very full anyway, just moved most of the stuff to the main fridge)

• unplugged everything with standby modes when not in use: cell charger; laptop power supply; modem; router; 3 tv's; DVD; VCR; garage door opener; probably other stuff I can't remember. I was surprised how many things fell in this category.

• got far more hypermilish with the lights switches.

Other than that, didn't do anything special. Still ran the computer, dishwasher, battery charger (running load tests) etc. Pretty much didn't require any sacrifice to my routine.

Results over the next 2 days: 8 kwh; 7 kwh. Wow.

[MetroMPG]

Turns out that at 22 kwh we were already "beating the EPA" too - the provincial average is 30 kwh / day per household! (900 kwh/mo. - http://www.hydroonenetworks.com/en/e..._MeterRead.pdf )

[bennelson]

My wife and I use about 300 KWH per month.

That means we use about a third of the average home. It's not hard. Use compact fluorecent lights, turn off lights when not in room, unplug items when you don't use them.

We aren't exactly off the grid or anything, but I like not paying too much for electricity.

We had our bill at just over $30 monthly. It is about $36 now that we pay for renewable power.

At least if I leave a light on, it's coming from a windmill instead of a coal plant.

[newtonsfirstlaw]

I think with most of our lives there is at least the potential to reduce usage of things by an order of magnitude. But doing so requires a lot of attention to detail, a lot of little changes.

I keep thinking that I should build my own house and put a water tank right in the center of it to use as a big thermal mass, while insulating the rest of the house. Maybe burying another tank deep in the ground and pumping between the two would be all that's needed to cool the house, otherwise you could just pump air through the house on cool days or nights to cool down the thermal mass.

It's very, very analogous to pulse and glide. Or, a bit like pulse and glide but adding a big lead weight in the car that had no additional effect on rolling resistance.

The insulation is lowering the drag coefficient, which halts energy loss. The thermal mass is like the lead weight that makes the car coast forever.

The other thing I must do is buy some insulation and make outside panels for the fridge or freezer.

Fridges/freezers are designed so screwed up from the point of view of efficiency. If they were designed correctly, the condenser would be outside the house, or at least on top of the fridge somewhere. And there would be a crapload of insulation, say 6-12 inches thick. And then they'd use next to no electricity.

[newtonsfirstlaw]

Note that this seems to be a similar idea, but instead of using water they are using air.

It's a lot cheaper to just pump a fluid than to "pump" heat by means of compressing a refrigerant.

[trebuchet03]

My electric consumption has sucked in my apartment.... I don't think we've ever gone below 1000 kWh in the past 6 months... why:

1. Electric Heater, Range, Oven
2. Old: Refrigerator, A/C <-- cant change - apartment
3. I'm willing to bet walls are poorly insulated <-- can't change - apartment
4. The weather has been abnormally hot (It's not even 11am and it's 73.6)

I'm on the second floor of a three story building - not sure if that means anything...

What I do to lower consumption
1. I don't use the dryer (my 2 room mates do)
2. Open windows/doors at night when the temp is cool enough (humidity requires it be extra cool)
3. CF bulbs throughout - even in refrigerator
4. Shut things down when not using them (TV, fans, computer)
5. I generally unplug phantom loads (it takes over 200 hours for my cell phone charger to register .01kWh on the kill-a-watt... and something like 175 for my laptop charger)
6. Insert something I'm forgetting...


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I'm curious of the 10% off deal will promote consumption... Kinda like the daycare that charges $5 for late pickup (the fine lead to more late pickups).

[Who]

Wow... we actually got that 10% check... a whopping $16.21 and that was before the electric water finally got retired and switched over to an indirect off the boiler, should have done that before November I guess. I'm not sure what we did, because outside of the domestic hot water changeover, I went on the hunt for stray zap juice several years ago.

[bennelson]

Hey Trebuchet,

Apartments are notoriously bad for electric bills.

The are designed to be cheap to build, but not to run. If I built my own house, I would go the opposite - put in good materials and design, and reap the rewards for years.

When I was in an apartment, it was electric everything. We were in the lower unit. It was split-level with another apartment above it and on the end of the building.

I think our upstairs neighbor got all our heat. We were on the north end of the building (where the winter wind comes) and even though we were on the end, there were no windows on that wall, so light was terrible.

Just do all the little tricks you can to cut down on electric use. At least in our apartment, the electric heat was individually controllable in each room, so we could turn it on and off as needed.

[stargazer]

If you have your computer charged into a surge protector, does that cut electricity if you only shut off your computer? I mean do I have to turn of the surge protector also?

[ebacherville]

my uncle lived in a apartment and turned off his heat the other apartments around him kept his apartment at 56 or warmer all winter.. he did this out of cost savings as he was out of work this winter.. saved him hundreds of bucks every month.