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

General Tech
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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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

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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)

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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.

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

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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€¦

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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.

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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:

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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.

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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.

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

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

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Do you have floor heating or an attic fan?