Emily Velasco

My electrical utility says I used 124 kilowatt-hours for the last pay period of 32 days. That means I used an average of 3.875 kilowatt-hours per day, or about 161 watts per hour.

Most of that is probably the refrigerator, but I would have to buy those little plugs that let you monitor appliance power usage to find out for sure.

May 30, 2025 at 3:03pmWeb
Show threadEmily VelascoMay 30, 2025
It would be kind of neat to see how low I could get it without massive changes in lifestyle.
Show threadAdam RoachMay 30, 2025
@MLE_online I’ve had mixed success using Sense to detect devices and separate out usage; but I’ve added a lot of plugs to precisely measure specific devices, and have occasionally tried to reduce usage as much as possible. It’s kinda tricky with several people in the house, though.
Show threadEmily VelascoMay 30, 2025
@abr I see they monitor from the smart electrical meter. How does it know which appliance is which?
Show threadAdam RoachMay 30, 2025
@MLE_online they basically “fingerprint” devices based on some combination of power factor, power draw, and presumably some other details of use. It works okay for some things (it’s pretty good about detecting the car charging and the tea kettle) but not others (it never detected our microwave). I also had to get separate clamps to distinguish between our two identical HVAC systems.
Show threadEmily VelascoMay 30, 2025
@abr Interesting! I'm reluctant to put apps on my phone, but I might see if my utility's smart meters work with this and give it a try
Show threadAdam RoachMay 30, 2025
@MLE_online oh, that’s neat! I didn’t know they had added that. I bought one of the home energy monitors that goes inside the breaker box a while back.
Show threadAdam RoachMay 30, 2025
@MLE_online I just remembered: you probably don’t need the phone app; most of the functionality is available from https://home.sense.com/
Sense

Show threadAdam RoachMay 30, 2025
@MLE_online for us, A/C dominates, but your intuition about refrigerator usage seems about right, based on what I see ours doing. (The big spike is a defrost cycle, BTW)
Show thread🚲May 30, 2025
@MLE_online Before we moved to electric everything our average usage as a family of 4 was down at 6 kWh per day. Now much higher.
Show threadEmily VelascoMay 30, 2025
@dx yea, electrical everything would make electrical bill higher lol
Show thread🚲May 30, 2025
@MLE_online Electricity is dirt cheap here so bills are actually way cheaper than when we had natural gas. We solar panelled last year too (thanks govt incentives!) so in theory we should be close to 0 kWh when you subtract solar generation per year.
Show threadEmily VelascoMay 30, 2025
@dx I don't know which is cheaper here, but as a renter, I'm stuck with natural gas for stove and water heater. I'm also reluctant to give up gas for those because at least I can still cook food when the power goes out.
Show thread🚲May 30, 2025

@MLE_online Yeah, that’s nice for sure. We have an alcohol camp stove from our more adventurous days. It’s fine for a short duration outage of 6 hours, but if it was a multi day event would quickly grow tiresome.

Not having heat if the power went out made me slightly reluctant to switch to heat pump until I read up on it and realized the gas furnace would not operate without power anyway.

Show thread🚲May 30, 2025
@MLE_online I grew up on well water and to this day whenever the power goes out my instinct is “nobody flush any toilets!!” even though we’re on municipal water here.
Show threadEmily VelascoMay 30, 2025
@dx It's warm enough here that I can get by without the furnace. I actually haven't turned it on at all for the last two winters. It's a lot cheaper to just wear a blanket and use an electric foot warmer, or use the electric blanket rather than heat the whole place
Show thread🚲May 30, 2025

@MLE_online “Heat the person, not the place” Nice.

Also on the topic of energy use, these folks are interesting https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000-watt_society

2000-watt society - Wikipedia

Show threadmittenMay 30, 2025
@MLE_online I know you've said your library branch sucks, but just in case: LAPL does loan out those "kill-a-watt" measuring devices. https://ls2pac.lapl.org/?section=resource&resourceid=1089113831
Los Angeles Public Library : Kill a Watt EZ

LS2 PAC
Show threadEmily VelascoMay 30, 2025
@mitten Sadly there are none at my local branch, according to that page.
Show threadPopeASDF  May 30, 2025
@MLE_online @mitten I came to share the same, most libraries have them to loan… that said my kill a watt was 20$ or so and I have lent it to multiple friends at this point to return the value :)
Show threadEmily VelascoMay 30, 2025
@PopeASDF @mitten As usual, the LA County Public Library seems to give all its resources to the west side, and almost nothing to the east side. The closest branches to me that have them are El Sereno and Arroyo Seco. Those are both far, and my local branch never tells me when my interlibrary loans arrive, ol.
Show threadraweMay 30, 2025

@MLE_online just for reference: my "energy efficient" refrigerator uses 40 Watts if running and runs 1/4th of the time so it ends up at an average of 10 Watts. So if its really the fridge depending on the price per kWh a new one could make financial sense within 1 or 2 years.

I found out that my washing machine draws 5 Watts constantly just for being plugged in and "off" so half of the fridge!

You could just try to unplug all devices that are not in use for one period/month and check how the value changes. This includes the Internet modem/router if not at home. If you have access to the meter just do it for 1 or 2 days and extrapolate the difference in reading to one month. This should give a good idea about wasted "standby" energy.

A used kill-a-watt should not be too expensive, maybe 20 bucks? You could sell it again after the investigation.

Is a small PV setup (e.g. one 400 W PV module plus a microinverter) an option for you?

Show threadEmily VelascoMay 30, 2025
@stereo4x4 A small PV setup might be an option if it doesn't require being hardwired into the house electrical system. I don't own this place, and the landlord wouldn't be ok with me having an electrician do things
Show threadraweMay 30, 2025

@MLE_online here in Germany we have "plug-in PV", so basically just a small inverter and 1...n solar panels. The whole thing is sold as readymade sets with a normal power plug. It is limited to 800 Watts injected to the outlet to not overload any circuits and pose a fire risk. Those things are quite popular now. I run 2 and I know 15+ people who own and run one. https://balkon.solar/news/2025/03/17/how-does-plug-in-pv-in-germany-work/

Technically I see no reason why something like this would not work for you. I don't know about the legal situation at your place so ymmv.

How does Plug-in-PV in Germany work? – Alles über Steckersolar, Balkonkraftwerke & Solar!

Show threadStewart RussellMay 30, 2025
@MLE_online that's astonishingly low. Go you!
Show threadstfnMay 30, 2025
@MLE_online I'm using Home Assistant and some Zigbee sockets to monitor stuff around my house, it's a rather simple solution
Show threadEmily VelascoMay 30, 2025
@stfn That sounds like a simple solution for someone who knows a lot about networking and computer code
Show threadstfnMay 30, 2025
@MLE_online not exactly, Home Assistant makes its actually simple, hiding almost all of the complexity. The main downside I would say is cost
Show threadEmily VelascoMay 30, 2025
@stfn hmmm, I've never seen anything that made home assistant look like it's simple for someone who isn't good with that kind of stuff
Show threadstfnMay 30, 2025
@MLE_online probably I am biased because I do a lot of such self hosted stuff :)
Show threadEmily VelascoMay 30, 2025
@stfn I've never self-hosted anything lol.
Show threadstfnMay 30, 2025
@MLE_online in that case yes, it can be a pain to start. Theoretically, HA sells turn-key solutions that do not require any self-hosting knowledge, but I have no idea how well they work