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Old 10-22-2009, 03:59 PM   #19
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Govt surplus is the way to go with solar. A buddy of mine in CA put in a 10KW system for $12K, using retired panels that were still at >85% output.
out here in phoenix solar works really well

to the point where it generates more then you use and the electric company sends you a check back to buy back power

+ APS and SRP out here have HUGE rebates, covers almost 80% of the cost
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Old 10-22-2009, 04:22 PM   #20
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I bought a sweater, and saved thousands. what do I win ?
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Old 10-22-2009, 04:56 PM   #21
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2 floor townhouse - 1000sq feet, electric bill varies from $27-$40. We've lived here for 16months, last month at $40 was the highest we've ever paid. I think its because we got busy and used the dish washer a lot instead of washing by hand.

Every light is CFL (some full spectrum/happy lights).
in the summer we ran the A/C for a grand total of about 10 hrs. and in the winter we'll hardly have to use the heater. THANK YOU 40F weather.... so much better than the sub 30's (-10F to 30F) I grew up with. If only there was half as much rain in the winter, and twice as much in the summer... then this place would be almost perfect (from a climate perspective).


When I buy/make a house in the future... I plan on having the water heater be 100% solar powered. From what i've read, the water heater alone will save you a lot on the elec bill. I also would want to having a "living roof" so as to better moderate temps in both winter and summer.
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Old 10-22-2009, 05:00 PM   #22
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Iono where we are going to be just yet. I'm hoping somewhere in the 2k range for the year for energy usage. Our highest was at 180 for a month in the middle of the summer. But we had more insulation put it (alot more) and had some leaks and sills fixed as well. Made a huge difference.
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Old 10-24-2009, 01:27 AM   #23
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That's awesome!

I have been monitoring my energy use for the past six months. I installed a system on my main panel that lets me see the instantaneous usage on any circuit. Just with paying more attention and replacing some older appliances we have cut our usage by 25%. We still use way too much though, as both my wife and I work out of our home. Geothermal for heat/AC and solar photovoltaic are on our short list of home improvement projects.
Once again I come to you for a question lol.

What system are you using? Would like to
know what in the house is using all this electricity. I swear my sister has never had the tv off in her room even during the night ever. Since it does serve as a radio as well. My mom defends her saying that's not possible. But audio recordings at 3am any random night and constant high electric bills tell me and my dad otherwise.

Having a system like the one you described would finally solve our questions and allow us to put some lines on timers hopefully.
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Old 10-24-2009, 07:50 AM   #24
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Once again I come to you for a question lol.

What system are you using? Would like to
know what in the house is using all this electricity. I swear my sister has never had the tv off in her room even during the night ever. Since it does serve as a radio as well. My mom defends her saying that's not possible. But audio recordings at 3am any random night and constant high electric bills tell me and my dad otherwise.

Having a system like the one you described would finally solve our questions and allow us to put some lines on timers hopefully.
I started with a device from http://www.theenergydetective.com/index.html.

Their system has one set of sensors that clamp on the input wires to your electrical panel. It then transmits the data through the house wiring to their receiver unit.
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Old 10-24-2009, 11:27 AM   #25
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I started with a device from http://www.theenergydetective.com/index.html.

Their system has one set of sensors that clamp on the input wires to your electrical panel. It then transmits the data through the house wiring to their receiver unit.
That's a great tool for measuring the overall electricity usage for your home, but there's a much cheaper and easier way to get individual device measurements:

The Kill-A-Watt

That's what I used to audit our home, then waited for each month's power bill to see how our all-in per day and per month kWh usage was measuring up.
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Old 10-24-2009, 11:31 AM   #26
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That's a great tool for measuring the overall electricity usage for your home, but there's a much cheaper and easier way to get individual device measurements:

The Kill-A-Watt

That's what I used to audit our home, then waited for each month's power bill to see how our all-in per day and per month kWh usage was measuring up.
Agreed.

I got totally carried away with it and built my own system, based on the T.E.D. technology where I can measure the current draw on every circuit in our panels.
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Old 10-24-2009, 09:08 PM   #27
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Agreed.

I got totally carried away with it and built my own system, based on the T.E.D. technology where I can measure the current draw on every circuit in our panels.
Please explain how you managed that please. Maybe a picture and how much all the equipment ended up costing you. Thanks
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Old 10-24-2009, 11:05 PM   #28
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Please explain how you managed that please. Maybe a picture and how much all the equipment ended up costing you. Thanks
It's all behind my breaker panel, but I used 12 sets of their clip on current sensors (pictured below) fed into a circuit board which rectifies the low voltage AC signal from the probes into DC and then feeds them into ADCs of an array of microcontrollers. Each sensor can measure the current flow of one wire, so two are required for each 220 volt circuit and one for each 110 volt circuit. By the time all was said and done I dropped about $1000 on the project.



http://www.theenergydetective.com/store/accessories/


Here are some links to some similar DIYprojects:
http://jarv.org/pwrmon.shtml


http://blog.makezine.com/archive/200...sage_moni.html
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Old 10-24-2009, 11:20 PM   #29
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Nice.

Kill-a-watt seems nice, but I honestly dont know what good it will do to save any power.

I rather install what you did on the main line to then see how much power is being used in total and have it on the network to view from anywhere, that would be hot!

Now I wonder if maybe one day it would be a good idea to install solar panels in the backyard? I dont know, I will research that at a later date.
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Old 10-24-2009, 11:29 PM   #30
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Nice.

Kill-a-watt seems nice, but I honestly dont know what good it will do to save any power.

I rather install what you did on the main line to then see how much power is being used in total and have it on the network to view from anywhere, that would be hot!

Now I wonder if maybe one day it would be a good idea to install solar panels in the backyard? I dont know, I will research that at a later date.
What I did turned out to be serious overkill. The TED system is really all that you need. Start with it monitoring the mains to watch your overall usage. The TED display device has a USB cable that allows you to generate reports and graphs on your PC.

Once you see the patterns, you can pick out some things, like in my case, when the electric clothes dryer was running. etc. When I first started monitoring I noticed that through the night we were using 3.5 kW. Shutting down some equipment that didn't need to be left on 24 hours per day, dropped that down to 1.4 kW.
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Old 10-25-2009, 01:00 AM   #31
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Kill-a-watt seems nice, but I honestly dont know what good it will do to save any power.
I've never heard anyone say that before.

My electricity audit, done with nothing but a Kill-A-Watt and multimeter:
http://www.cleanmpg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4295
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Old 10-25-2009, 03:13 AM   #32
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The reason why I said that is because the first ad I ever saw for it was to save electricity and I thought that's impossible because anything plugged in will use electricity and will draw the same whether some device is behind it or not.

But now from your post I understand the reason for it. And it's something I will myself do very soon. There are just too many things in the house plugged in and like 32circuit breakers in the box. So it would be good to know what's using the power and what can be completely disconnected when not needed.

Thanks for the explination
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