reduce energy on standby

[Sideways]

Next time I do a roast should I sit there and time the red light on/off durations? Wouldn't change anything, would still cook but at least I would know. It could get to be an obsession ......

Don't bother. I watched the app when I turned on the roast today. A few minutes of 3.6kW as the oven ramped to 200C, then it just flipped back and forth between 2.2 ish and 0.5kW as it cooked using the fan. After the first 10 mins of full power I'd say it averaged about 1.5kW

I did a silly intellectual exercise the other day thinking about energy storage. Imagine using Potential Energy as a form of storage. I don't have a lake to use for pumped storage and my garden's small, so how about using surplus energy to raise a heavy weight and then let it down to turn a generator and get back the power when you need it.
Ok. What if we could use the whole house as a mass. I guessed 100 tons and let's raise it 1 metre.
Energy = force x distance
= 100 tonnes x 1000Kg/tonne x 10Newtons/Kg x 1 metre
= 1,000,000 Newton metres
(1 Newton metre = 1 Joule of energy)
Now a quick lookup tells us 1kW hour = 3.6 million Joules of energy
So assuming no losses and a perfect mechanism to do this silly experiment, I would be able to crank my entire house a metre into the air in just 17 minutes using only a 1kW motor for an energy cost of less than 6p.
Wow !
It demonstrates that one kWh is a big unit of energy

 

[guineafowl21]

It demonstrates that one kWh is a big unit of energy

In terms of physics, electricity is amazingly cheap

Think how knackered you’d be (and how much time you’d spend), ripping, crosscutting and planing all the wood for your next project, when a few machines can do it so quickly, and for pennies.

There are those who do it by hand, and I admire them, but from afar...

 

[Spectric]

This reminds me of a windup, we convinced someone that when there is no wind, some windfarms can use some of the turbines to generate wind so others can produce power, but we also convinced him that postman can deliver emails if you have the right connector next to your letter box!

 

[Sandyn]

This reminds me of a windup, we convinced someone that when there is no wind, some windfarms can use some of the turbines to generate wind so others can produce power

And did you know that in summer when power usage is lower, they use the surplus to drive the turbines like huge fans to keep us cool!

 

[John Brown]

This is all really useful, but talk of clamp meters, extensions and guineafowls set up, I wonder how long it will be before a tabloid runs with the headline "homeowner electrocuted trying to save power consumption". (Do the suppliers charge you for the jolt that gets you or is that one free?)

We do need to think of these things though: a smart meter (not got one) will tell you what is being used but not what is using it. Iterative switching on and off is needed I suppose but even then I wonder if it will 'see' the impact of low current items. Its hard to work out the effect of lots of things. I know what the power of my oven is, but if the oven is on for 2 hours the thermostat will be cutting in and out so I can't simply say 2 x whatever KwH and some is used to drive the fan which runs all the time. Same with hob and with most appliances.

Next time I do a roast should I sit there and time the red light on/off durations? Wouldn't change anything, would still cook but at least I would know. It could get to be an obsession ......

Actually, some electricity suppliers do tell you what is using the power, according to something I read a while back. Most devices have a distinctive power signature. Kettle? 3kW for 2 minutes. Fridge? 90 watts for 15 minutes, off for 30 minutes. Tumble dryer? 3kW for 80 minutes. After all, people have been power profiling microprocessors for years to steal code, guessing appliance usage is probably easy by comparison.

Having said that, Octopus, our electricity supplier, don't offer that level of analysis, as far as I know.

 

[mikej460]

Does anybody else have a headache

 

[woodieallen]

This is all really useful, but talk of clamp meters, extensions and guineafowls set up, I wonder how long it will be before a tabloid runs with the headline "homeowner electrocuted trying to save power consumption". (Do the suppliers charge you for the jolt that gets you or is that one free?)

We do need to think of these things though: a smart meter (not got one) will tell you what is being used but not what is using it. Iterative switching on and off is needed I suppose but even then I wonder if it will 'see' the impact of low current items. Its hard to work out the effect of lots of things. I know what the power of my oven is, but if the oven is on for 2 hours the thermostat will be cutting in and out so I can't simply say 2 x whatever KwH and some is used to drive the fan which runs all the time. Same with hob and with most appliances.

Next time I do a roast should I sit there and time the red light on/off durations? Wouldn't change anything, would still cook but at least I would know. It could get to be an obsession ......

Why not treat yourself to an Emporia system ? I've got one and it's brilliant. Emporia: Smarter Home Energy Management

 

[John Brown]

Does anybody else have a headache

Did you confuse this thread with the joke thread?

 

[Scruples]

methodically?

methodically - in an orderly or systematic manner.
Hope that helps.

 

[NewbieRaf]

@woodieallen can you tell us a bit more about your emporia system? As it’s something that I’ve been looking at.

 

[MorrisWoodman12]

This reminds me of a windup, we convinced someone that when there is no wind, some windfarms can use some of the turbines to generate wind so others can produce power, but we also convinced him that postman can deliver emails if you have the right connector next to your letter box!

Ah! At last I've found Joke thread III.

 

[HamsterJam]

We have been using an OWL energy monitor for years (way before smart meters were on the scene) and also a small plug in device that is easier to use than a clamp ammeter.
Link to OWL…
https://www.theowl.com/index.php/energy-monitors/standalone-monitors/owl-usb/Link to similar energy monitor…
https://www.screwfix.com/p/energenie-ener007-energy-saving-power-meter-socket/3477hThis combination is great for finding where all that energy goes.

 

[Spectric]

Anyone thought of producing there own electricity using steam which could also heat the house, all you need is a small boiler, maybe use pellets and then no more gas and sell your excess electric back to the DNO to offset any bills. It is times like these that sporn invention and inovation.

 

[Sachakins]

Save all your hunting, it's your fridge and freezer accounting for 90% of your standby power, but that's not really standby, so exclude it from the costs and stand by probably only £35 per year.

 

[Spectric]

To save energy you want your freezer in an unheated outbuilding, it will then not have to work as hard.

 

[sploo]

I did a silly intellectual exercise the other day thinking about energy storage. Imagine using Potential Energy as a form of storage. I don't have a lake to use for pumped storage and my garden's small, so how about using surplus energy to raise a heavy weight and then let it down to turn a generator and get back the power when you need it.

The JET "Joint European Torus" fusion facility at Culham in Oxfordshire has (or at least the last time I was there, had), a large wheel that they would spin up as an energy store for when they needed to start the fusion Tokamak reactor. The wheel is so large/massive that (according to a guy I spoke to) if it broke free of its mounts at full speed it'd still be going when it reached Newbury (20 miles to the south).

 

[mikej460]

Did you confuse this thread with the joke thread?

Either that or the most spectacular electrical engineering crammer I've seen for years...

 

[guineafowl21]

Either that or the most spectacular electrical engineering crammer I've seen for years...

@Spectric started it...

 

[Spectric]

If you want to get a better / deeper grasp of Ac electrical theory then you need the book "AC CIRCUIT ANALYSIS" by Noble Lockhart & Ora Rice. It is very good even though published in the seventies and some chapters are outdated it got me through college. The theory remains the same, J notation and network theorems have not changed and Kirchoffs loop equations can be invaluable. Back this reading up with "Electrical fundamentals" by Robert Shrader and you get more info on AC circuits as well as an intro to magnetics, a subject that is really interesting and fundamental to modern industry and technology. If you like simplicity then avoid Ac and just stick with Dc!

 

[nickds1]

@woodieallen can you tell us a bit more about your emporia system? As it’s something that I’ve been looking at.

I have just installed one of these, mainly for our three phase utility feed... As an electronics engineer and software designer, the system architecture appealed. It's a good system, but is USA-centric at the moment and is faily new to the UK market. This means that several European norms are not currently catered for, including split charging bands (economy 7 etc.) and "groups" where you can collect a number of circuits together and total them. e.g. in our case we have a 3-phase ground source heat pump and the current Emporia Vue2 software can only treat each phase separately.

However, I've found their tech support to be really good and responsive and they are committed to the UK market, so most of the above contingencies will be addressed in software releases later this year.

see my post in The cost of a microwave on standby - we have 3-phase, 100A to the property which is then split various ways - I just wanted to know exactly what was using what watts...

I ordered the special "wide mouth" (10mm) 50A CTs so that they'd fit round all the meter tails - the three 200A CTs for the 3-phase were the standard ones.