Incredible Power Usage

[ Jerry — MacSolutions]

This is more of a head’s-up rather than a question to the list.

If you’ve been playing along with the "at-home game,” I had approached the group a couple of years back, after having our home remodeled.  Actually, I believe that my first email was *during* the remodel, where I asked how I could monitor the power coming into the house.  I assumed that there was an issue with our meter being bad because having most of the wiring taken out of 2/3 of the house, our power consumption was still WAY above what our neighbors were using.

Our Electricity provider AMEREN, sends out a personalized usage assessment including the average of neighbors and also the average of the area.  Our home, with all the wiring disconnected and dark, was still way above all the other homes in our area.

Many of you cautioned me about contacting AMEREN, explaining that the company may ever raise our detected consumption by installing a new meter.  We chose not to.
After the remodel was finished, our home continued to use a large amount of kWhours.  We made sure that every bulb in the home was a newer LED type which used less power.  We had installed a new refrigerator, stove, microwave and dishwasher.  Nothing seemed to matter.

I even had an old ORIGINAL XServe that I was running in the basement that I shut down, thinking perhaps it was causing some of the power usage.  Nothing helped.

My wife and I have been having a lot of health issues over the past two years and just getting through life was the focus of most of it.  But this year, we were able to go on a vacation to Caribbean.  When we returned, I smelled an odor in the garage.  Like something died.  The GFCI circuit had tripped and the food in our stand-up freezer had all spoiled in the heat.  I decided that cleaning out a stand up freezer with hot, spoiled food would be worse than one with cold food in it so, I reconnected the circuit.  Which made me think, about the refrigerator that we also had in the garage.  I had left it plugged in, because there wasn’t room in the other refrigerator for some recent picnic treats.

I unplugged it and threw out the spoiled desserts.

The next month, my wife pointed out that our power usage had dropped DRAMATICALLY.  Our usage was not only below our neighbors’s usage numbers but, the the report showed that we were near AMEREN’s “Efficient Home” numbers.  I immediately thought of unplugging the refrigerator but, shook my head in disbelief.  I was sure that the refrigerator wasn’t drawing all that power.

The next month, the AMEREN Usage Report came in the mail and now we’re 100 hWHours *below* the “Efficient Home” Target!

For those of us who aren’t as aware of power usage numbers, I thought I share this.  The unplugged refrigerator was purchased in 1995 and while it still ran just fine, it is now given away and I’m thinking of a replacement model for times “overflow” like Thanksgiving, etc.

Jp