Electric Stovetop Cooking: Conservation ideas

How did you test your refrigerator? When I profiled mine, I found out that it had multiple levels of draw, not just an on/off value. For example, when making ice, it has a flash heater that melts the surface of the ice just before dumping it out of the mold. Makes for problem free ice release, but hardly what I expected to find in the ice maker....a big heater.

 

Please let us know the guilty load as a result of your detective work.

 

By the way, I now get ads for induction cook tops every time I visit this thread.
Before this, I did not even know they existed.

 

I hope you load-sniffers are aware that you can clamp an inductive ammeter on any live leg of a 240 volt line to read the current flow. Just don't get zapped.

I'd mention some inexpensive Asian manufacturers of such ammeters, but then you'd just get more popups

 

I have been cooking on Induction for over 30 years, and with the TED device I know I save over 30 percent on electricity over radiant. My son lives next door with radiant. I have a second home and it came with radiant, which after using induction with its excellent control, I found the radiant like going back to a campfire. I purchased two of the portable Induction units, $79 each and used them atop the radiant unit for two years before the country I was in had Induction cooktops available. You will save a lot of electricity and enjoy the speed and control of Induction cooking. Pans do not have to be flat, but do have to have iron content, I can cook through a napkin without burning it, and I can roll the napkin up under the edge raising the pan over a quarter inch and the pan still cooks on its entire surface. Good luck on your choices. Bob

 

As an example, a water heater can feel cold to the touch while still dissipating 80-100W. An IR thermometer is finding mine running about 5F warmer than ambient.

(I'm still trying to make a choice of heat pump water heater to replace it.)

 

Have you found the vampire that is sucking the electricity out of your kitchen yet?

 

Thanks for the update. The doorbell transformer was already on my gremlin radar, but because it is hardwired on a junction box (in the coat closet), I hadn't yet tried to measure it. If it is poor, I'll probably put an outlet on the junction box, and replace the transformer with an efficient 12V switch-mode power supply wall wart.

The garage door opener is one of those 'obvious' things hidden in plain sight. Not sure if I measured mine at ~1 watt, or never actually checked it. Mine is plugged into a ceiling outlet, not hard wired, so easy to recheck.

Smoke detector? Never even crossed my mind. Will explore that too.

No gas furnace here. The heat pump usually gets turned off out of season, but not promptly. I'll try to measure that too, somehow (when a TED or other energy monitor is installed), to see if it is important.

Earlier, I mentioned that various conservation efforts over several years have driven my all-electric house's annual load down from 10,900kWh/year in the previous decade, to 6,800 kWh last year. My new goal is <6,000 kWh within two years. The wish for eventual rooftop PV is hampered by shading from neighboring trees. The lower I can drive down the base load first, the lower the capacity threshold to get tax credits.
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PS. Quick checks find 2W on the washing machine (electronic controls, no longer the old fashioned mechanical controls), 3W on the garage door opener, and 4W on the microwave.

Those numbers were below my concern threshold seven years ago, when going after larger numbers on the electric heat, refrigerator, hot water consumers, entertainment center complex, broadband modem, and even an inkjet printer external power supply that was still a hog when the printer was off. But now that the lowest hanging fruit has been picked, these items should be reviewed again.

Electronic controls on the range and dishwasher are suspect, but not easy to measure without a whole-house or breaker panel monitor. Drier is still mechanical control, so it should be completely off. The doorbell transformer is running 7F warmer than the surrounding wall, which seems significant.

An old style electric kWh meter arrived over the weeked, and will soon be wired to the water heater circuit at the new disconnect. I hope to collect some baseline data before the old heater is swapped for a new heat pump unit. It won't provide as much data as a TED monitor, but is much cheaper.

 

I really long for the good old days when an on/off switch turned things on and off rather than todays on/off switches just change the power indicator light and changes a software condition. A couple of oddities I have found over the years:

1) An apple computer is really good about reducing power draw to extremely low limits, but watch out in a power dropout occurs with the computer off. It really upsets the standby circuitry and while the computer looks like nothing has happened, the standby draw actually increases, at least for quite a while.

2) Rechargeable devices, such as portable phones, are often listed as very low standby draws. Unfortunately, that number only applies when the device is not in the recharge cradle. Once in the cradle, the recharge circuitry goes active whether recharging is needed or not. Bottom line here is EnergyStar and other "standby" wattage numbers are essentially meaningless for items like portable phones, drills, whatever.

3) Only search for phantom currents with EVERYTHING unplugged (not just turned off). An amazing number of modern devices that we normally think of being off when turned off, are not. Things like internal heaters, fans, rebooting circuits, etc. turn on and off.

 

9 watts between the 3 devices, what is that 80kwh/year. That seems pretty small to worry much about. Have you switched to LED lights?

 

That is for just 3 devices. I can quickly find 16 more devices always plugged in (5 have been moved to switched power strips) plus 5 light and fan timers. We used to have several more.

Many households have a lot more, and it is easy to hit 50 to 100W of always-on gremlins. On this tiered rate structure, that would be a substantial fraction of my total home energy bill.

LEDs are now on all the timers, a few other high use positions, and the straggler incandescent locations not suitable for CFLs. The other locations are still CFLs, and will probably remain so until they burn out or the LED market matures more.

Oh, I do have four incandescent floodlights outside, and a couple portable task lights. But they are strictly manually switched, and so rarely used that upgrades don't yet make sense.

 

Is that one of those 250W heat lamps? We still have one in the hallway bathroom. It is used only when heat is needed, the vanity CFLs are used at other times.