So what is your MINIMUM power usage? 249 here for a big house

Not only is this the lowest power usage I have ever seen in my house, but the solar was really cooking too today.

This surplus of power by 6,934 watts got me thinking. I understand this flows out my house to other houses on the grid. But since there are only three other houses on the same transformer that I am on what happens if their usage is less than 6,900 watts? Can that power actually reverse the flow in the utilities transform and go out on the grid - and if not, what happens to it???

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2100sf ranch, only thing running is the always on :slight_smile:

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The lowest Iā€™ve ever seen is around 120 watts. We have a 830 sq ft house in the city.

129W is the lowest Iā€™ve seen.

I took the opportunity and tracked 23W to my cable tv box which draws power in standby now. It only bumps up slightly to ~25W when in use. I tracked another 35W to my cable modem + 2 routers. Still left 71W from unknown sources.

Iā€™m 202 always on. Cable Modem, Wifi, 2 DVRs, NAS, vampire TV stuff (I assume). even my garage door openers use powerā€¦ 4 of those. 2 EcoBeesā€¦ how much do those use?

Thinking about ditching his and her alarm clocks beside the bed. maybe go to a single one and or use iphone alarmsā€¦ Iā€™d wager anyone born after 1990 doesnā€™t have an ā€˜alarm clockā€™ beside their bed anymoreā€¦ just use your phone.

Iā€™m pre-1980, and I havenā€™t had an alarm clock in 20 years :slight_smile: We have a few Google Homes around the house now, and they make for a fair alarm clock, Iā€™ve heard. Havenā€™t tried, we get up at 5am with no help, really. Guess itā€™s my farming background.

Thinking about our always on, weā€™ve got a few LED clocks (microwave, stove, etc), a router, a stereo in sleep mode, Ecobee, a few other smart devicesā€¦probably drawing on the order of 2-3w each to make up our 32w always on.

Iā€™m at around 140W :-), I have been trying to eliminate energy wasters and it has been working!

Update: for around a day I had mine down to around 103W! I like that we are all sharing with one another, it makes it fun to see what other users are experiencing!

Iā€™ve seen mine as low as 350w or so, but Iā€™m usually closer to 500w

I have yet to break below the 1,000W barrier. Always on devices rarely get below 900W, and unknown rarely drops below 300W.

I do have solar, and I have seen it produce upwards of 16kw at times. Iā€™m the only house on my transformer, so yes, when you generate excess power, it flows through the transformer and out into the grid (in my case that is 14,4kV.

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~170W at night with the Fridge offā€¦ The Fridge doubles it, and runs for 50% of the time (20ā€™ on, 20ā€™ off)

Mine is at 488W, I have to figure out how to reduce that. I guess with a bunch of TVs, a Tivo, a few Tivo Minis, AppleTV, etc, itā€™s high.

Mineā€™s 184W - 1800 sq ft house with a couple of computers and the usual always on stuff.

My lowest has been 368W for 3900 sq ft. house. My sleuthing of whatā€™s inside that:

  • 5 clusters of electronics (office, service cabinet, entertainment center, master bedroom, playroom) that each have low water marks of between 25 and 37W, maybe 180W in all. This includes TiVos, servers, a couple of Macs in sleep mode, net connected stereo in standby mode, cable modern, router, switches, and three extender WiFi basestations.
  • A couple of Toto toilets with seat heaters that the women-folk in the house wonā€™t let me put in auto-energy save mode. Maybe 20W each.
  • Several each, TVs and printers in standby mode. Havenā€™t measured but I think that is pretty small.
  • Doorbell transformer powering a Ring Pro camera, plus thermostat transformer powering two Nest thermostats (unknown)
  • A number of mostly new phone, computer and other USB type chargers. (unknown)
  • A bunch of old-school mechanical lighting timers for outside lighting, plus sprinkler control box. (unknown)

So I can account for about 2/3 of the unknowns, with a bunch more possible suspectsā€¦

5000 sf ranch, have never dropped below 1100W always on, although itā€™s only been 48 hours since it was installed. This is part of the reason I bought the Sense, I wanted to learn more about what Iā€™m using and how. That said, I also run a small business out of the house with a few employees that are in during the day as well as me, so we have always-on computers, a big server, switches, routers, etc. Iā€™ll bet the server is 30-50% of the total. Waiting for it to be identified to see.

finally someone in my range! generally itā€™s around 500.

Iā€™ve actually gone as far as unplugging everything and still canā€™t get anywhere close to the numbers other people are getting!

this weekend my goal is to turn every single thing off and figure out where this ā€œ500ā€ is coming from! :slight_smile:

Mine started in the 350 range and has dropped to 204. Since I got the sense Iā€™ve identified many decives I could consolidate or remove from my network as well as powering most down.

I just installed sense and my standby usage in around 1300! I kinda figured I had a problem somewhere when I looked at my July bill and had high usage while I was on Vacation and the house was empty. No AC or anything. Time to find the juice is flowing.

Have you noticed any wires running from your panel to your neighbors house?

You must be the 5th person to ask me that. But no, there arenā€™t any that I am aware of. LOL

Do you have floor heating or an attic fan?