Average household electricity consumption 2014

SFourie_15 said:
Nice Thread..
Average about 705kw.
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Thought I'd chuck it on a graph for you - but normalising for number of days between readings. It looks like your consumption has been steadily increasing rather than decreasing... but I guess that's winter for you (lights because the night is longer and heating because it's colder!)

SFourie_15 said:
2 Geysers, 1 very large 250lt and one 150Lt. Only on timers now..1 hour evening and morning.
0.75kw pool pump only swith it on about 1hour a week (maybe, depends if pool is dirty).
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Wow - that's a short time to warm up a geyser. You're better bet would probably be to only use one... but ultimately unless your geyser is very old or outside, it's not the timing/keeping-it-warm that's costing you money but the amount you pour down the drain. If it's at 60 degrees, then each sink-full (around 20L) costs 1 kWh. That's the same as a 2-3 minute shower but that massively depends on your shower!!
http://blog.homebug.co.za/?p=308

SFourie_15 said:
Last month put in 40 LED downlights, all light are either LED or Energy savers.
Hopefully with new downlights in the house and timers on geysers the energy consumption can come back down to 600 mark.
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Wow - that's a big switch, 40 downlighters should make a big difference. Say you're putting those lights on for 4 hours every night and assuming they are 60W downlighters, then that's:
40 lights x 60W x 4hours x 30 days / 1000 (watts->kilowatts) = 288kwh/month
With LEDs that should be more like 10W so:
40 lights x 10W x 4hours x 30 days / 1000 = 48 kwh/mo
So you should expect to save around 240kWh per month. Now of course if you aren't turning those lights on for 4 hours, but more like only 1 hour per night, then you'll save more like 60kWh.

Counting backwards:
700 average:
150 on lights (half what I said above - probably some are on all evening, 4-5 hours, whereas others only for an hour each night)
240 on hot water (1 hour x 4 kw x 2 geysers)
20 on TV (e.g. ** below, Samsung PN51E450 51" plasma = 21kwh/month @ 5-hours/day)
= 290 left to find?
I really wonder where the rest is going?
What's left on all day and night? Fridges, freezers? (should be around 50-100 depending on age/number)
PC's left on all day? Driers and Washing machines? (can be serious users if not thought about)
How do you cook?

*PS - don't want to be probing, so tell me to shut-up if it's getting too much. Just trying to figure it out to help you out. The more we can learn, the more we can help all South Africans!
** - http://www.cnet.com/news/what-you-need-to-know-about-tv-power-consumption/
 

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richjdavies said:
So did a bit more research on the fridge thing and put the info here:
http://blog.homebug.co.za/?p=48

I was wrong to say new fridges are all A++ -- that's in the EU, here in SA with the energy crisis and all, we're happy with really inefficient ones :)

Seems like if you have a really old fridge just chugging away in the garage you might be paying more for the fridge than the occasional beer you get from it!

Headline figures: New Fridge uses around 300kwh per year, whereas an old one can be 600. 1000 or more?! Could easily be costing you R1000 per year to keep that old fridge running (or around R20/week)...
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I have a little old bar fridge outside. It uses 120 watts constantly. Was shocked when I measured that. Close to 90 kwh per month. It's now unplugged.
 
@richjdavies no worries love the analogy...

The one big geyser is for the Kitchen, Guest Bathroom and Flatlet. The other smaller one is only for On-suite Bathroom.
I.e I shower every morning and evening and wife takes bath at night. Around 19:00. Timer is ons for 1hour at night and 45 min in the morning. But this has been implemented in the week, the shower this morning wasnt cold but wasnt hot either. Need to make both 1hour.

Yeah, winter was a bitch and took more kw's to warm the house etc. But also in Aug and Sep we ReNOVATED the whole house, and used drill's and jackhammers to loosen tiles, mix adhesives, drill holes etc...Abnormal kw expenditure for those two months.

The downlights are a mix bag, some 5w 450lumens, other 2w 160 lumens.
I wuld say about 50% of each. The 35% of the 5w 450 lumen are in the bar/entertainment area and rarley get swithced on. and the other 35% are in the kitchen, and 30% in main on-suite bathroom. So estimating 1hour for the 5w is spot on. The 2w are in the hallway and TV room, they would be on for longer, reckon about 3-4hour+, while watching tv.

I hope to see some savings with the LED's, yes. But only time will tell.

As for the Plasma i have the F4 series and they estimate 185w/h, 5 hours = 0.925kw/h give you about 27kw/h per month.

as for the 290 left:

2 Fridges, 1 freezer. One fridge is rate A+, the freezer A++. The other one is alot older.
No PC's. Only recharging of Tablets and Iphones.
Wife does cook at night. The flatlet has Gas Stove.
Two Microwave ovens, Two Kettles.
Drier and Washing machines used on Mondays and Fridays only. But dishwasher on about 3 times a week.
Maid also irons clothes.

So i reckon the 290 goes here?? But yeah want to push down back to a 650kw a month. More than 650 you fall in the more expensive price bracket - Rand perKW/H.
 
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I kept track during this month of the meter readings...

Just had a look at my meter this morning...Looks promising!!

26/08/2014 97090 ---- usage ---- Daily Average
03/09/2014 97338 ---- 248 ---- 31.0
08/09/2014 97469 ---- 379 ---- 29.2
12/09/2014 97552 ---- 462 ---- 27.18
17/09/2014 97664 ---- 574 ---- 26.09

expected Usage 778
Days Left 7

Coming down!!
 
My household goes through a crazy amount of electricity. We have a prepaid meter (we hate it but it came with the house and Eskom say it can never be changed back to postpaid) and we load in R1000-1200 a week, so minimum R4000 a month.

This covers:
- 4 large TV's, one of which is usually in use
- 3 gaming PC's & another workstation PC
- underfloor & towel rail heating for the master bedroom
- an outside hot tub with an automatic maintenance program
- two fridges, two ovens, tumble dryer, dishwasher, washing machine, stove, microwave etc.
- a number of portable heaters that are used infrequently when particularly cold
- two geysers
 
Lose the underfloor heating. Also, turn down the hot tub.
 
Wow! R1200 a week!! That is rough!

I also have a jacuzzi but only used it once when we had house warming... It was awsome!!

Its not cold enough in SA to warrant underfloor heating or towel heaters... that was designed for UK and Canada conditions. Or more like Siberia!!
Well it doesnt warrant it i my eyes... Use slippers in winter over cold tiles. sit with your feet infront of a heater. And if you shower or bath, you already hot you dont need a hot towel as well..

Taking these things away will most probably save you a couple of Thousand rand a month! Think of it like R10k-R24k a year.. that's scary

my 2c.
 
SFourie_15 said:
Wow! R1200 a week!! That is rough!

I also have a jacuzzi but only used it once when we had house warming... It was awsome!!

Its not cold enough in SA to warrant underfloor heating or towel heaters... that was designed for UK and Canada conditions. Or more like Siberia!!
Well it doesnt warrant it i my eyes... Use slippers in winter over cold tiles. sit with your feet infront of a heater. And if you shower or bath, you already hot you dont need a hot towel as well..

Taking these things away will most probably save you a couple of Thousand rand a month! Think of it like R10k-R24k a year.. that's scary

my 2c.
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I couldn't care less about the hot tub, underfloor heating and towel rail. I'm not the one demanding it. No doubt the electricity usage could be decreased quite a bit by not using them, but such is life.
 
200-250kWh/month for me. (see below - was away in August, so cut that month off and didn't have my current Homebug before March!)
2014 capture2.PNG

2 Adults in 2-bed apartment. With a geyser, fridge freezer, big LCD TV, electric oven (and we added an AWESOME induction hob recently - not for efficiency, just for sanity!) and we've recently replaced the final few incandescent bulbs with LEDs, most were already CFLs. We also have laptops which are worked from most of the day.

Pretty much mainly geyser - which we turn on when the water is too cold, for a couple of hours or so. This is why we have days when we use almost 20kwh and days when we use 1kwh - the high days are when we're in all day, cooking at home and have turned the geyser on. The very low days are ones where we're out all day and probably ate out in the evening.
May Capture.PNG

I've got minute-by-minute data from my Homebug, so I'm pretty sure where it all get's used; and the reason we replaced some more lights -- I actually tried out numerous different options, and most were too awful too keep!

I'm on the lower Cape Town Prepaid tariff, so have to make sure I don't buy more than 350kwh per month - the price is R0.96 for the first 350, but R2.33 after that! (luckily my homebug makes that easy too!)
 

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Cool breakdown...

I'm reading up about the homebug thing..

What did it cost? installation by Electrician? Total Costs?
 
SFourie_15 said:
Its not cold enough in SA to warrant underfloor heating or towel heaters... that was designed for UK and Canada conditions. Or more like Siberia!!
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Underfloor is actually rather useful...you just need to use it strategically. People tend to leave it on...no clue how they survive that. Maybe mine is just extra powerful but I'm seriously cooking after an hour let alone 24/7. I usually just go for 30mins....then the floor is lukewarm for the next 3 hours.
 
SFourie_15 said:
...the homebug thing... What did it cost? installation by Electrician? Total Costs?
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No electrician needed - just sticks on top of the flashing light on your meter, then you plug it in and it just works. Costs just under R1000, for the GSM version. I'm sort of a beta-tester for the guys - so trying to stay on the right side of not marketing here :) but I think they're almost ready to roll out production now.

As well as the monitoring, the cool thing is that it says how long your credit is going to last and makes it easy to buy more credit. They're working on a way to basically make prepaid a lot more automatic.
 
richjdavies said:
No electrician needed - just sticks on top of the flashing light on your meter, then you plug it in and it just works. Costs just under R1000, for the GSM version. I'm sort of a beta-tester for the guys - so trying to stay on the right side of not marketing here :) but I think they're almost ready to roll out production now.

As well as the monitoring, the cool thing is that it says how long your credit is going to last and makes it easy to buy more credit. They're working on a way to basically make prepaid a lot more automatic.
Click to expand...

O ok. I dont have a prepaid meter... so how would that work? Or is it mainly for prepaid meters. Would be nice to see where all my power goes, especially the times as well.
 
so ended up with a reading of 738KW for the month. Still not good enough. Hope to see this drop in coming months...
 
Shouldn't really matter how many geysers you have or if they are timed or not* it's more how much hot water are you using each day...

If it was all on hotwater, you'd need to using 400L per day at around 60 degrees-C** - showers vary alot, but can be around 10 L/min, so that's 40 mins of showering every day... not that much really... [PS - I'm not saying that P924 doesn't shower :)]

Heaters (or air-con) are the next big thing... then driers/washing machine if used frequently, then possibly lots of old appliances that are always ON (e.g. fridges...).


* as long as they are well insulated, not outside, or leaking?!
** - 700 kwhr x 3,600,000 J/kwhr = 2,520,000,000 J / 4.181 J/kgC (water) = 602727 kgC / 50 degrees (70-20 or 60-10) = 12,055 kg of water heated up by 50 degrees-C. 1 kg of Water = 1 Litre; therefore 12,000 L / month = around 400L / day.
 
Not technically the thread for this, but I just had a random thought... How much of a consumption difference is there between a modern fridge and a very old one? ie pre-2000 model.
 
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