On Thursday night I went home and unplugged everything in my room.
Aside from lamps, which I'll deal with later, I came up with a surprisingly tiny haul--one clock radio, two battery chargers, a cell phone charger, and two laptops.
I threw everything into a trash bag and headed off to my friends' house. We tested everything again using a more expensive (and presumably more reliable) ammeter. The new readings mostly agree with what I was getting from the Kill-a-watt, so I'll be using that from now on. We're still unable to determine the cause of the impossible 42-watt-reading from Wednesday night, but it looks like things are back on track.
Here's how the power use in my bedroom breaks down, in terms of the wattage used by each appliance. (I used the information printed on light bulbs for the lamp watt estimates.)
With the new numbers I was able to estimate that my room consumes about half a kilowatt-hour per day. According to my electric bill, we use about 6.5 kWh each day at my house. I'd guess that most of the rest comes from the fridge and lighting throughout the rest of the house, since we heat the apartment and cook with gas.
I didn't realize it would take so much time and energy (no pun intended) to measure the power draw of appliances. And now that I've done it, I'm disappointed to find that they don't even account for a tenth of my electricity use. I need to keep looking for a place where energy-conservation can have an impact that seems more significant.
I think my expectation of the energy savings associated with small electronics was artificially high because of the number of news stories I've read about the merit of pulling the plug on my wasteful, vampiric, power-sucking electronics, and switching out my incandescent light bulbs for compact florescents or maybe even LEDs. Both changes are worth making and actions like that have to add up.
But sometimes the little things feel like... well, little things. That's why it's heartening to see top-down solutions, like California's legislation on energy efficiency, that compliment the actions that everyone can take to reduce energy use.
What about you? Have you made any small or big changes in your energy use lately?
Aside from lamps, which I'll deal with later, I came up with a surprisingly tiny haul--one clock radio, two battery chargers, a cell phone charger, and two laptops.
I threw everything into a trash bag and headed off to my friends' house. We tested everything again using a more expensive (and presumably more reliable) ammeter. The new readings mostly agree with what I was getting from the Kill-a-watt, so I'll be using that from now on. We're still unable to determine the cause of the impossible 42-watt-reading from Wednesday night, but it looks like things are back on track.
Here's how the power use in my bedroom breaks down, in terms of the wattage used by each appliance. (I used the information printed on light bulbs for the lamp watt estimates.)
With the new numbers I was able to estimate that my room consumes about half a kilowatt-hour per day. According to my electric bill, we use about 6.5 kWh each day at my house. I'd guess that most of the rest comes from the fridge and lighting throughout the rest of the house, since we heat the apartment and cook with gas.
I didn't realize it would take so much time and energy (no pun intended) to measure the power draw of appliances. And now that I've done it, I'm disappointed to find that they don't even account for a tenth of my electricity use. I need to keep looking for a place where energy-conservation can have an impact that seems more significant.
I think my expectation of the energy savings associated with small electronics was artificially high because of the number of news stories I've read about the merit of pulling the plug on my wasteful, vampiric, power-sucking electronics, and switching out my incandescent light bulbs for compact florescents or maybe even LEDs. Both changes are worth making and actions like that have to add up.
But sometimes the little things feel like... well, little things. That's why it's heartening to see top-down solutions, like California's legislation on energy efficiency, that compliment the actions that everyone can take to reduce energy use.
What about you? Have you made any small or big changes in your energy use lately?
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