EEVblog 1505 - 120W Home Phantom Power? Audit Time!
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- Опубликовано: 11 июл 2024
- My home takes 120W phantom standby power. Let's do a complete audit and see what is consuming the most power, and how it can be reduced.
How bad product design kills the environment: • EEVblog #1284 - How Ba...
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00:00 - Standby power measurement audit
07:52- The fuse box
11:46 - Spreadsheet analysis and differential power measurement
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#ElectronicsCreators #phantompower #solar 
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NOTE: I completely forgot three mains powered smoke alarms. We had to fit these when the home extension was added to meet new building codes. I thought they were still battery powered (but they do have battery backup)
Yep, those will eat a watt or two. Are they not powered by the lighting circuits?
I recently added wiring to the main panel for the garage and because of the heavy wire and limited space, ended up breaking the wire for the smoke detectors. I determined this as they would go on and off with a chirp, when they shouldn't have been when working on the panel (safely ofcourse). Lucky for me, it was an easy fix as it broke right at the circuit breaker. The ironic headline: " man dies in fire started by faulty smoke detector wiring."
Do you have a garage door opener? Mine has wifi capabilities and all that (which I won't use, as it prob connects to the cloud and Amazon doesn't need to know the status of my garage door), which I'm sure will use some standby power.
still shocked by how your breaker panel is wired. Jeez.
I had 3 old mains smoke alarms. 15W each. They had NiMH batteries and just chewed the juice. I have Z Wave relays on my entire light circuit that kills the power to all lights and smoke alarms when we're out or late at night. Also have AC on one. TV is also on one. However I'm about 80w minimum power. That is fridge, raspberry pi, wifi, modem and a few others. I monitor power three ways. Two Schneider electric systems and through the utility. My data agrees with the utility by sub 1 percent. I'm sampling as fast as I can which is a little below 1Hz. Then stick it all in a database and query with grafana.
To me, phantom power means something completely different: 48 VDC for condenser microphones.
True, this is just standby power consumption.
Maybe we should call it 'vampire' power!
@@paulf1071 I have heard that used for this kind of standby power-use.
Imagine 120 watts of that!!! Would that be a lot of mics or one really freakin' massive (and hopefully detailed, for that 2.5 amps) one?
I'd call it quiescent power.
It would be good if you teardown a efficient sony power supply with some generic one that is taking far too much power. I would like to see what the internal differences are.
Already done many times!
Just search for USB cube teardowns.
@@diegobob3306 That's what I am trying to tell you... He already did such teardowns!!!
I worked as service engineer for Miele, their appliances are one if not the best in the market, very well built and very energetic efficient, even the detergent and water consumption re very low, and they last for ever, in fact you can still get parts for your 40 year old Miele washing machine! Good luck in other manufacturers. Very cool video Dave.
At my work place we spent £5000 retrofitting LEDs in place of the CFLs, we went form 9500 watts to 3500watts. That is a lot!
My lab buildign switched to LED lighting many years ago. Forget the figures, but the savings were in the 5 figure range.
@@EEVblog that's really good!
yeah Miele good ol German engineering
Miele is German so to be expected :)
I'm a Miele convert, I was aware of the service life aspect re spares from a documentary IIRC, my aunt has her original Miele dishwasher, now over 20 years old, and I notice that unusually the current range of Miele dishwashers are hot feed.
I did a similar energy audit and added some home automation to try to manage it better, only to find some of the RF controlled power relays had worse power use than the loads they were managing! My next plan is to centralize all this into the mains breaker panel, then pull some new circuits as needed. But that's for the next remodel...
Yeah, you wouldn't bother to automate switching stuff under say 10W or something.
Just chuck an extra PV panel on the roof and don't worry about it!
Yeah got to be careful when to use these, I measured 1.2W drawn by a Wi-Fi socket, and 0.3 to 0.6W from a zigbee socket
Had the same issue with a cheap night time light sensor, it used more current than the led address sign load i was going to switch with it . If I remember right it was above 5watts.
Low quality automation devices can do that. Expensive hi quality devices go the other way. A Wiz 1600 lumen bulb running at 800 lumens only uses 4 watts. It is $22 instead of $12 for an 800 lumen bulb which will use 8.8 watts.
I did a detailed energy audit recently. Following some significant changes, I managed to shave £2,600.00 off my energy bills per year.
Mind you, my parents aren't happy to see me back home again.. :)
LOL
You had me in the first half, not gonna lie.
Please do a DC mod of your alarm system, I'm actually curious to see how much energy you can save!
that alarm is really horribly inefficient
@@monad_tcp I agree, but mine uses similar. I don't understand why they can't be more efficient, because every watt is 8700wh per year!
One of the largest savings in electricity I've made was installing a solar (not PV) water heater. I still use the electric water heater but it draws hot water from the solar heater on the roof so 9 months out of the year the electric heater doesn't even turn on, and in winter it takes in warm water instead of cold. I'm in the southern hemisphere also (Uruguay) and we get direct sunlight all year round.
The hippies that built my townhouse did the same thing. In the southern USA (NC), the thing's all but useless, which is why they were all removed 15-20 years ago. Works great in the summer when we don't need much hot water (which also heats the house - hippies, remember), and just pisses energy into the wind (literally) all winter. After installing an A.O.Smith Vertex water heater, my gas bill (hot water and house heat) hovers around 15-20$ (vs. over 100$ previously) The highest it's ever been was around $50 - it was below freezing most of the month.
Solar hot water water system were all the rage here in the 1980's, but the market died out almost completely.
@@EEVblog In Greece and Cyprus solar heaters are almost universally used. I turn on the electric heater in the solar 3 times a year. (300+ days of sunshine)
Remember, the best domestic PV panels convert "only" ~22% of available energy but Solar water heaters capture as much as 95% if wiki is to be believed.
@@jfbeam if it consumes energy in the winter that seems like a poor design, not a necessary feature of solar heating
I wouldn't recommend turning off the NBN routers, if they detect your connection keeps dropping out they will put a speed profile on your service, which slows the speed down, best to leave it on for best performance
I did something similar and found some hardwired loads to the house. One was inside a wall compartment, powering a UPS for the wired phone line. I only found this because the UPS started to beep due to battery failure. The other loads were in the attic, powering wall-warts to the AC air handler.
why are those wall-warts for AC so horrible inefficient ? aren't they supposed to draw less than 1W when the A/C is off. Or they are just a bunch of dumb coils.
Interesting your Miele dishwasher was only 0.15W. I recently reverse engineered our Bosch dishwasher for a repair that took three months and I measured the standby at 0.16W, so probably similar electronics. It has lots of power saving techniques, e.g. a chip to disconnect the X2 cap discharge resistor while the mains is on and only connect it when the mains is disconnected. It has circuits to measure the heater relay outputs which take about 1mA. It has a special chip to disconnect those high voltage monitoring circuits when the power is off. An opto isolated serial bus between the user interface MCU and the main control MCU that gets powered down in standby by another opto and then needs a fourth opto for the soft power on.
Wow...It truly is Phantom Power! I need to audit my home, as well...Thanks, Dave!
The high reactive effect means that you pump a lot of current into the cables, which also become losses in the form of watts in the cables between your power meter and the consumers
You can get a fancy biomechanical garage door opener, no problem in emergencies 😂
That moment that the multimeter said "Hello" at 1:57 😁
Dave, great video, well done.
I was checking my home recently as well for parasitic loads and what surprised me was my Klipsch 2.1 multimedia speakers for my PC. This setup uses a powered sub and when idle it draws 19 watts!
I have since put that plug on a seperate switch to power off when not in use.
Yikes.
..... I thought my Siglent SDS2352X-E was bad.
I wired my tiny amp to run from a Molex inside the PC. It freed up a wall socket and there's less wires without the laptop style PSU.
I used a scrap barrel plug to go to my Sonic Impact T-Amp. It can also run off AA batteries! I'd rather get a car stereo for radio though.
Thinking about it, instead of E-SATA etc I'd prefer they put an external 12v output on the back of PC power supplies.
@@dazednconfused31337 That kind of mod is a recipe for instant ground loop issues. I'm surprised they didn't jump out at you right away. On a modern PC with a high-power GPU the noise when firing up a game can be deafening.
Klipsch ... well, that says it all. #1 design consideration is turning max profit from hype and sub-par performance.
Not very good audio design... piss it up the wall consumption from the land of copious consumption.
When the Marketing Dept gets involved EVERYTHING turns to shit.
Australian electrical panels are a mess.
I know , i dont think anyone outside the UK has got the hang of this electricity stuff yet .
It's hard to make sense of it with everything upside down.
Nice work, Dave! Some things you actually want running 24/7, and other things are just "not worth it" to try to optimize. 120W is pretty good, especially for a large home with a techie resident.
That's less power than my network gear and server uses.
I could certainly save a lot of power by getting a newer server with solid state drives, but that's several thousand dollars to upgrade.
Yeah, not much to do here, just the WiFi/modem maybe.
Sorry for the long post, but this is close to my heart since of my current job and what I'm seeing how people waste energy....
I'm so glad I live alone in a apartment building (in this regards) I have less than 10 devices on during the day and only 1-3 that are plugged in permanently...
This phantom power draw is a real issue.
Thinking that hundreds of millions of people have at least this much power draw on devices that don't do ANYTHING being just in standby, that adds up globally to a lot of power draw for NOTHING.
I still remember your video on those mains powered smoke alarms and how you did quick back of the envelope calculations for Australia to show how much wasted energy just those alarms create... it's such a waste and any country claiming to be green or environmentalist is just full of it unless they understand to get rid of this wasted energy...
Especially now in Europe we should strive to reduce all wasted energy to ZERO to get over the energy crisis.
And it starts from consumers AND companies being aware of the issue and cutting off everything unnecessary to get that strain on the grid out and that might start bring down the price of energy finally.
I'm an AV maintenance technician in my current job and I see huge companies, having huge office complexes just WASTING TONS AND TONS of energy with devices that are on 24/7 wasting often hundred watts per meeting room, times 100 meeting rooms per building times tens and tens of companies just in Helsinki metropolitan area.
Huge LED screens that are on 24/7, tons of information displays, meeting room displays, lighting etc... it's amazing how much energy is just pissed away for NOTHING.
I start to despair time to time.
And they do this because manufacturers of different AV devices are unable to create stuff t hat can RELIABLY go to standby and then get the whole system back up from there without any issues of different AV links being buggy or something...
It's just nuts.
I hope the energy crisis wakes legislation up for this real issue and starts to enforce device manufacturers and companies to stop this insanity.
Thanks a lot for this video! It's giving me valuable information. I mean, everybody has all that stuff in the house, but cannot really measure the standby consumption etc. A good starting point when you think about saving energy in your house. 👍
One more thing about power measurements: many small power supplies can be not only capacitive load, but also very non-linear and noisy. Power meters have some error related to this and it may vary alot from one instrument to another.
I`ve seen one meter mistaking Sonoff wifi relay(
It's amazing how it all adds up
Excellent video. I shall do something similar. I started but never finished. I used the same power meter for all measurements however I suppose I could prove away inconsistencies in meter tolerances easily thus allowing me to use a mix.
Really good video Dave, thanks
I kind of knew that once I get solar I would pay more attention to the total watt usage. But, I had no idea how obsessive I would get over a couple of hundred watts trickling ... lol
I love the beautiful mess that Aussie power boxes are...
As someone from the right-side-up part of the world, that was crazy to see. What a completely random collection of breakers.
Note for UK users (your mileage may vary), EVERY SINGLE WATT of phantom power is costing you almost GBP £3 per year! It all adds up... Dave's 120W (not untypical) is therefore costing around £350 per year. This year, next year, and the year after. Neon indicators in extension sockets - half a watt each. So they've all come out! Name brand switched mode "wall wart" power supplies do perform noticeably better than no-name ones, AND probably wont kill you either. Which is nice. All my PC accessories (screens, printers, speakers) are now on a automatic slave powered socket which is only live when the main PC is on. Worst culprit was an old 'fridge in the garage which serves just to keep a few "tinnies" cold (for "emergencies"! :) ). That averaged over 20W! So it's now unplugged. Warm beer never tasted better.
If my calculations are correct, you're paying £0.47/kwh (A$0.82) That's outrageous! Here in Queensland Australia, we only pay $0.22/kwh (£0.12).
@@mickeyBtsv 34p/kWh cap placing us in debt for the next few decades, actually.
Currently on a mission to gut my home server consumption, we're sat at around 600W overnight, which is horrifying lately. Phase one should knock in the ballpark of 100W out of that straight away.
My rule of thumb is 1watt = $1/yr. That works out to 11.4 cents/kWh, which is about average in the USA (some people pay much more!)
@@Monkeh616 I don't know what you're running for servers, but newer hardware can be surprisingly efficient. I have a full 7th gen core i7 desktop PC as a server
that idles around 30W. That's with one SSD, integrated graphics (it's a server), and no peripherals.
@@mattv5281 I'll be replacing my ancient warhorse of a dual X5650 with a 4th gen i5 - by means of replacing the i5 with a 6th gen uniprocessor Xeon (basically an i7 6700). In the process dumping the dedicated GPU no longer required by the i5.
Should drop 100-120W straight away for fairly minimal outlay. The old beast has served me well but that massive stack of buffered DIMMs and the spinning rust are so long in the tooth they're digging a grave for themselves.
Next up will be examining what I can do about my NAS situation.. sadly I think that's going to require a rather larger investment.
My house has a couple of mysterious loads that you can't turn off, for example the doorbell consumes a good a couple of watts, but you'd never know though as it was hardwired in when the house was build, don't even know what it looks like, only reason I know is because I can see on the thermal camera there's a warm spot on the ceiling where the doorbell is the loudest. Also surprised to find I have a much higher idle power consumption mostly because of a server that runs 24/7 but also all the ovenized test equipment that's always in soft standby along with plenty of environmental sensor data loggers.
Also, I think if you tell your kids you're gonna start turning the internet off at night they'll hand crank a generator to repay you the 300 Wh, but you'll probably have to sleep with an eye open.
I've looked through practically every square inch of my roof and I'm pretty sure there is nothing hidden. There are some old alarm reed switches but that's about it.
EDIT: just remembered there are three wired smoke alarms. They were compulsary to add when the extension was added.
@@EEVblog I'd suggest @WizardTim is right - the ankle biters will probably be glad to power the big hamster wheel in order to not get Internet curfews imposed 😁
Absolutely correct there is a 120ac to 6+to 18v tranny “can you say that”? Former in every attic/crawl space drawin all day. Go Green! #shitaddsup
@@EEVblog The place we rent has those wired smoke alarms too. They all show as warm on a thermal camera, which I’ve been meaning to check how much power is being wasted. I’m guessing more than a few watts each if they’re excepted from GEMS or MEPS legislation 😢
@@EEVblog Some doorbell transformers hang on the side breaker and/or fuse boxes here in yank land. Out HVAC low voltage transformer is within the air handler.
G'day Dave. Some air conditioner manufacturers design their compressors to have a small amount of current pass through the motor winding to keep oil warm to prevent refrigerant migration to compressor sump. This is to increase compressor life.
A very good point, yes!
I found this behaviour in my Mitsubishi Electric. 50W!!!
@@DumahBrazorf Yeah, nothing wrong with that, apart from being an extra power hog. I wonder if the controller of the system is smart enough to run this heater before start if you do decide to put it on a timer switch - it should have some delay built in, otherwise any "cold" start would decrease the compressor life.
Yep... dedicated crankcase heaters are also commonly used.
Have been for years in the domestic, commercial and industrial applications.
Increases comp life by preventing hydraulic lock... trying to spin up with a case full of liquid. Seen enough snapped con rods from that in my time.
I reckon Dave would be shocked at the start and LRA current level from a basic non-inverter drive comp.
@@zaprodk Do you think a run delay of an hour from switching on would be acceptable to the 'demanding an immediate result' society these days?
The issue isn't 'cold start'... it's having the mechanical components totally immersed in fluid, that limits it's capacity to rotate.... like filling your car ICE to the top with motor oil.
Ya gunna do a conrod or reed valve... lock the rotor and have it OC trip.. again and again until start and run windings or Cap/s suffer.
The heater (be it discrete heaters or trickle through motor winding) prevents refrigerant condensation and accumulation in the sealed motor/compressor dome.
I have worked on mains power distribution cabinets and we always add a mains power analyzer that is conected right after the main braker and can measure W, VA, Q and the power factor.
Great explanation 👌 thank you very much dear dave
pfc based smps only drawing less power and higher efficiency
Lad and I went through our house back in Feb and measured everything. A lot can't be off, fridge / freezers / aquarium etc. but it turned out to be the trivial things like having an alarm clock radio each side of the bed (one removed, now just a wireless charger) or turning off monitors rather than standby. But the biggest gripe I have is having to run a second freezer for all the wife's 'bargains'. I often argue that the savings she gains are lost by running a freezer to store them.
However I work from home and run a server and all the IT that goes with it, but 300w is pretty much as low as it gets for us.
Nice Zellweger ripple control receiver :D, rarely used in the U.S. love seeing them, such an interesting concept.
Dave,
You just made a bunch of wackos run around their house trying to figure out how to save a nickel 🤣
That's me lol. Our energy meter is claiming we are wasting over 700W of power day and night, I am determined to find out what is using all that power because thats a substantial amount.
@@jamescollins6085 Check it throughout the nigt and then calculate the mean consumption in Wh over one hour. This way you eliminate factors like fridges going on/off and such:)
@@jamescollins6085
That's like $0.05-$0.15/hr, no doubt that it's worth finding.
On the other hand: trying to find 50W worth of "parasitic draw" is a waste of your life and unneeded stress.
I just lump all that parasitic draw into the category of "auxiliary electric heater" and it's job done.
I have literally spent two days looking at our 2.2Kw baseline load and ways to reduce it. Highly recommend the Emporia Vue range of monitors
We have underfloor heating throughout our house - and everyone tells you that those distribution (e.g. per floor or area) pumps would seize up if you turn them off for the duration of summer (and bit of spring/autumn). And since pumps are
Perhaps the difference between the power measured at the devices and at the panel is the resistive losses due to the reactive current. Take the total VA, divide by 240 to get the current, and estimate the resistance of a typical wire run from the panel to the outlet (count both legs), then see if this reasonably accounts for the difference.
I2R losses are very small. I forgot about three mains powered smoke alarms.
@@EEVblog the mains powered smoke alarms would be wired to your light circuit which you already turned off.
I did this a while ago because we were getting billed as if we used 600W on average, which I knew was absolutely impossible for an apartment with no AC and no heat (San Diego). Turns out the fridge was broken…
The defrost coil was fighting the compressor like 24/7, so it was switching between 900W and 400W constantly. Our real standby consumption was like 50W
Oh man 🤓. I did stand-by power consumption check exact same way a few days ago. I was able to cut down 50w out of 95w, just by changing linear power adapters with smps ones and turning eco mode on power amplifiers. Only Aiwa nsx 999 mk2 is drawing 15kWh in a month in standby mode.
One of the first things I did when I moved into this house was to put the living room TV & AV system on a surge suppressor with a conveniently-located switch. This was ~15 years ago, and we hadn't phased out our use of CRTs yet. That saved a ton of power, I'd wager. We're still continuing it as a habit to this day.
With an old CRT TV, it can "power on" in a matter of seconds. Today's "modern", "smart" junk takes an eternity to be _ready_ to turn on. For example, my (old now) Vizio TV takes several minutes to "boot" after power is applied -- the power button will not turn it on during this phase. DVRs need to be on 24/7 to do their job. Streaming devices (apple tv, roku, etc.) are much like the TV... takes ages to boot.
There are numerous way higher constant loads throughout the house... my laptop uses 20-30W idle (screen on). Desktop uses ~100W. Switch(es), router, wifi... all add up. I _could_ shutdown the laptop, but I don't want to wait for it to (re)boot. (the desktop runs things that are needed 24/7)
@@jfbeam Curious, my Roku stick takes about 10 seconds to boot from cold - I normally keep it disconnected at the USB power and only plug it in when needed as the TV is really bad at switching HDMI inputs. I'm with you on the DVRs though - not much point in them if you are going to cut the power when they might have been set up to record. Truth is though that I use that less and less these days when everything is available on catchup services anyway.
@@jfbeam This is one of the areas I'm glad to be cheap. 😁 Our 2009-vintage Vizio is probably one of the last of the "dumb" monitors Vizio made. Starts up in seconds. The audio gear is a hodgepodge of old analog stuff -- newest pieces are 18 years old now. We do have a streaming Roku stick, powered from the TV, but that boots up fairly quick for us (10-20 seconds).
You're quite right about the new hardware though. Some of it takes longer to boot than my first Windows 95 PC from ~25 years ago. I wouldn't want to cycle that every day. And the PCs are another story... ⚡💸
@@McTroyd I have a smart Vizio, and it boots in about 10 seconds. I wouldn't use it as a smart TV, though, because the UI is drawn entirely by the underpowered CPU.
You didn't find many surprises. So I share some of mine
15W Old Network Printer
10W Panasonic TV with factory settings (you need to deactivate some smart stuff to get it down to 1W)
10W Old large 5.1 Sound System with passive speaker
9W Modern Samsung 5.1 System with active wireless speakers
8W 8-port Gigabit LAN Switch from 2009
We pay 3,50€ per 1W phantom power in germany, so I bought some stuff to get these things cut from the grid:
- I have push to activate button with auto turn off (turns off if programmed power usage is considered as inactivity) for my printer (Windows will schedule print jobs if printer is offline)
- I use master-slave power strips for devices with connected speaker systems
- I replaced the 2009 Switch with a 15€ 2022 model (1W with 7 links) and already paid for itself
YES!!!!!!!! This is why I’m Subbed. Dude. You Rock. Edit: why I have damn near er thing on switch’s. $h1t adds up. Ya feel me. #shitaddsup
The Xbox has spinning media and does large updates in the background. That could be some of it. It could also try to keep phoning home if the option isn't turned off.
Only seems to do updates when we tell it to
@@EEVblog odd. Usually it'll download it in the background then take forever to install. The xbox one s was bad for downloading the whole os everything they made a slight change to the machine. In the settings off means 2 different things. Sleep and download app updates such as games and whatnot but the big updates they ask first incase you hit yes and it bricks your machine because Microsoft and have to download a usb backup.
I love the witch hunt though.
Hi Dave, at night my house runs at about 250-350W but that's with 2 freezers and 2 fridges, all my network equipment, NAS, etc and the UPS's on them so that if I have a drop out on the solar or (if I'm on the grid) my connection to work during the day doesn't get interrupted. I see peaks of about a KW when the furnace pump comes on to heat the hot water tank. Once I'm 100% off grid I'll do an audit too to see what really can be turned off. During the day when my PC and monitors are on the house draws about 700W. Which is easily provided by the solar panels on the worst most overcast days.
I did something similar a few weeks ago when we got our mandatory smart meter upgrade. I was shocked when I discovered my old Yamaha AVR is taking 70W... I never turned that thing off, not sure why I thought it will take next to nothing if it's not playing anything. So in the 10 years I have it, I wasted more than a 1000 bucks in energy with it easily...
Yeah, amps do use a lot when on, oddly even if you turn the speakers off (using the button that unlatches the speaker relays). The Pioneer one I have uses 30-40W. The good part is that if you put it in standby, it'll only use 0.1W or less. Shame it takes a few seconds for it to power on the speakers when you power it on.
However I don't know if frequently powering it on/off will damage it (like a dozen times a day).
My amp was using 28w on standby!
Datasheet said 0.5w. reality was 28
@@njipods then it didnt really go into standby. standby would be with everything off and the amp waiting for remote on signal (or power button press on the front). if the amp is on but idling, that is not standby.
@@blockbertus it was standby. I check with the manufacture.
@@njipods what model was it?
Was watching a guy in California, Shango, who plans on running a vintage TV 24/7 until failure. He mentioned their energy cost, which seemed high, and overseas, I couldn't live where I currently do at some of those costs mentioned.
I pay a measly 8.306 cents per kWh, and still try to be as efficient as possible. Mostly all LED, taking it easy on the AC and heat, water heater turned down a bit, devices unplugged, etc.
That said, it's a full electric house with no heat pump technology to be seen. Typical whole house AC and forced air electric furnace at 15 kW. I paid $70-110 a month in late spring and summer, I expect winter to be at least double (though I'll try to keep it cool inside).
I havent measured the stand by power of the house lately, I do have one of those Cent-A-Meter I think it was called and it clamped onto the main phase wire coming into the switch board. My actual monthly usage is like 80-100 kWh a month so not a lot compared to some.
I can recommend an easy fix for your toothbrush power draw :D
I did detect these issues by reading out the current power draw on my power meter installed by the energy provider. If you have a digital one you can ususually directly read the value which you will get charged for. So there are no measurement issues if you use the actuall device that measures the amount you are charged for.
To meassure each room I just turn off all breakers and meassure one circuit at a time.
Those Aussie fuse/breaker boards always makes me shiver.
What a rats nest.
I had some high power outdoor lights (i live alone in the contryside here in sweden), they were 40w each so i put em on a motion sensor Works great but its now really dark when looking out trough my windows. The biggest power eater is my air-air heating pump, but its really needed in the colder time of the year.
That is a great idea!
Most (good) wifi routers allow for scheduling of WIFI radio hardware power. You can turn them off or reduce them to a very low power at night automatically. They also usually have settings for disabling or dimming the LEDs, as they can be very bright and distracting at night (and probably suck a bit of power too!).
You might also be able to save a little power by powering both the modem and the router from the same brick. Most consumer network equipment takes 12v at 1 or 2 amps max, so a single high-efficiency 12v wallwart may be better than 2 separate ones, as long as it can handle the load.
do the air conditioner compressors have crankcase heaters, that prevent accumulation of liquid refrigerant due to gas condensation at lower ambient temp? That condensation occurs when the compressor isn't running due to higher temp in the dome while the motor runs.
If you do time lockout any supply to AC unit/s it may result in compressor failure/damage through hydraulic lock.
GREAT VIDEO DAVE. I'd put a light switch for the Garage door. But Great video.
2:07 - Your entertainment system includes a printer? "Gather around fam. Just printed another app note" 😁
Hard wired smoke detectors will definitely add to your total phantom power consumption as well.
Yep, have three of them I completely forgot about.
My old house idled at 250W over nite, new one 150W (minus a fridge & a few smart lights).
This is important when you have a battery system - 100W x 10hrs of non-solar = 1kw. Thats 10% of a good sized 10kw battery system!!! Its worth it.
As a side note - A/C units, my old one was 3phase & 100wx3 purely reactive power! so reports crazy numbers unless you get the phases etc
I've been working through my house taking many of those small loads off grid. The kitchen lighting has been 100% solar for over 8 years now, same in the attic and patio and the garage/shop has dual lighting, either DC or AC depending on the solar conditions. Some wall warts have been replaced with DC-DC converters running off a 12VDC circuit in the house, including the low voltage transformer for the door bell. I'm averaging over 2KWH/day on that DC system.
Well done. I will have to think about implementing that idea. Thanks.
@@ecospider5 Thanks, my strategy is to start with something small. When I showed my system to a friend some years ago, he commented that I was just doing the "low hanging fruit". And yes, that's the idea, just pick off something easy, like eliminating the doorbell transformer and feeding that with 12VDC. Eliminates a watt or so of vampire load and assuming you have 12VDC from a battery bank, there is zero standby power loss (assuming no doorbell camera type system), in fact my first video on YT:
ruclips.net/video/59MTQu---ZI/видео.html
With an off-grid solar setup, you take DC off the panels, store into a battery, then pull DC out of the battery to power an inverter for high voltage AC then convert that back to low voltage DC to run some small device.
That’s a good way of dealing with it. I have only done that with 1 thing. My electric lawn mower. 2x12v 50w panels on the shed was plenty to charge the mower.
I do have a full 10kw solar system but I can’t add to that without hiring someone. So doing some more 12v stuff makes sense. Like my outdoor cameras.
Just add one more solar panel, designate it the"phantom load mitigation panel" and bob's your uncle. I did the same analysis a while back, I used my thermal camera to look for things that were dissipating heat. I was amazed how bad those iron transformers plug packs were. Set up my router, cable modem, E-switchs, VOIP modem, speakers etc to run on just one switching mode 12V plug pack.
This is the type of survey most of us here in northern Europe have ended up doing thanks to the skyrocketing electrical price. By our current prices, we'd be paying close to $10 a month for that 2kWh/day standby consumption alone! I ended up ordering 3 of those measurement plugs you can put in series with regular wall plugs and can be monitored through an app on your phone.
Missing power usage due to capacitive coupling of the wires in the house especially on long untidy nests in the loft.
Problems with switching routers/modems off at night is most do updates at night so switching off at night would miss security updates.
I did an audit of my whole house a few years ago, it was around 300w with everything in standby mode. It turned out to be a GE radio flip number alarm clock sucking down 130w, the UV light at 70w on the humidifier that was on all the time as long as it was plugged in, the transformer for the 1980's door bell sucking down 80w at idle and a few 1-2w wall warts. The alarm clock got thrown out as it was just in the spare bedroom unused for many years, a new modern power supply for the door bell idles at 0.2w to keep the led on the button lit up and we just unplug the humidifier when not in use.
130W seems highly improbable for an alarm clock. There's no way it could dissipate that much heat without melting. Same with the 80W for the transformer.
@@RobertHancock1 Seems like these numbers are way off. Probably measures with a "power meter" that doesn't take into account when cos/phi is not =1.
Many devices like phones and tablets (probably the Amazon Fire TVs as well) do background things like software updates that need internet. You might want to check those devices before looking at turning the internet off at night.
It might also be important to check the cell service around the house where phones might be left over night to see if they can get good enough connectivity.
Try switching to a two pole relay on your AC system. Many manufacturers cheap out and install single pole relays. Used to be needed to keep the refrigerant from condensing (heater) but modern scroll compressor don’t need to worry about it.
First thing in the am my smart meter shows from 86w to ~220w with the variation due to whether the two fridge/freezers' compressors are active. The 86w powers a router, Chromebox NAS, one or two running Chromebooks and multiple devices in power-down mode. My UK annual consumption comes to about 600w average mainly due to over-use of a heat-pump dryer (!).
I’ve recently added some remote controlled mains sockets for the washing machine and tumble dryer. I’ve setup a timer on a raspberry pi to run them when we have cheap electricity. Fortunately both machines are old, so you can set them up, kill the power and they resume when the power is resumed.
that old washing machine is likely to use significantly more water than a economically well made modern machine. Obviously heating water is very energy intensive
I did a similar audit a few months back, though I did not go as far as the fuse box, just measured every appliance one by one.
The most unexpected save I did was changing the ~16 year old power supply I used in my server. It was a top of its line device when I bought it, back then the 80+ rating only had one level, no bronze/silver/gold levels. I changed it out to a new 400W 80+ Gold rated one (lowest wattage Gold rated ATX power supply I could find). That ended up shaving down a fourth of the power my server used - 38W -> 28W for motherboard/cpu only, 96W -> 73W when idling with all devices awake, 170W -> 130W on bootup when the HDDs spin up.
I think what made the biggest difference is that the old power supply was really old and that affected its efficiency, since going by the specs it was only some 5-10% worse, while I'm measuring much higher than that.
And on a similar note, what's the highest lumen R7s LED bulb out there? The most I could find was ~2400lm, which is only a bit over half of what my old halogen bulb produced. Of course the halogen bulb used 12x the power, but it also doubled as a bug zapper in summer and a heater in winter.
I used to have a server running in the closet just to screw around with. I realized I was paying a ton of money in electricity for no good reason. I replaced it with a raspberry pi and that’s more than enough power to run my small web apps, a few files, and basic home automation. The silence at night is also nice.
@@markm0000 unfortunately that's not the case for me. The odroid h2+ would've been a good replacement (x86 and 2.5GbE) but it is discontinued. At this rate, it might be more economical if I started buying 4tb SSDs.
Meticulous as always; thanks Dave. Currently doing something similar (Europe here...) with energy-monitoring smart plugs (installed permanently). Discovered that one of my vintage HP Frequency Counters kept powering an OCXO while being switched "off". It must have been heating for the birds for several years.
Anyway, I gained 18W for the nearing winter, though I'll probably never get RoI for the smart plugs. 🙂
How much power do the smart plugs use though?
@@benholroyd5221 Depends on the type, but roughly between 0.5W and 1W each (I have TP-Link HS110; nous A1T; Fibaro and GoSund 110 plugs).
Brave man turning off breakers thinking "We're (the family) not using that". I tried this once. That sentence sums it up, "I tried" and "ONCE"
You could consider walking around with your IR camera. You'll quickly see where the energy goes.
The crankcase heaters of ac units take a bit and it is not a good idea to turn them off unless you manage it a different way. You can't turn them off for hours and switch on or you could sling liquid refrigerant and DAMAGE the compressor!!! At the beginning of air on season, it is recommended to power condenser without any call for cooling for 48 hrs to boil off all refrigerant in the crankcase!!!
I did The same, my house is 50w. What about de doorbell?
As a european, i find that power/meter panel with everything mounted on a swing out board, and all those lose wires highly unusual :)
Disturbing perhaps?
Wow Australian circuit breaker panels are wildly different than American ones
I can assure you; they do not all look like that.. thank goodness
My custom solar monitor does 5 second intervals constantly. Does consume about 50mA doing it. About 250mW.
I recently found a downside to this when I made my automatic interior lights dim slightly at sun set. However the solar panel output bounces around at sun set and I trigged on "less than 0.1W" power. So around sunset my lights on that theme start to brighten and dim over and over for 30 minutes at sun down.
Dave, in regards to your car charger, can you add a service disconnect to it?
Not familiar enough with codes in your country. Most places in the US are ok with home installation of them.
Basically treat it like an (older) electric fork lift charger setup. So they wouldn't chew through power when not charging a lift. If your charger can handle the off/ on cycles, it might help. Much more robust the the one you showed in the vid.
My solution for the wifi, cpe, network switches, TV Boxes and home assistant (basically, anything that natively runs on 12v or less), was to move it all on to a set of batteries, with its own solar and cheap pwm solar charge controllers (2 x 50 watt panels and some old batteries). That way the usage of those items no longer affects any other figures, and additionally, it keeps the internet on during power outages, at no extra cost.
Smart solution. However, if your neighborhood has a power outage, would that not mean your internet is down too, as it's probably somewhere in the area in a central distribution box with active/powered elements that also will go down?
Anyway, good idea, perhaps when you remodel/built new, consider your own DC mains circuit to most of the rooms and utility closet?
@@ewoutbuhler5217 Unfortunately I live in South Africa, which has "Loadshedding" 3 times a day due to lack of maintenance and general upkeep, so they switch power off to certain areas each day because "Something" has failed at some point and they have to conduct "Maintenance" to said unit, and then they spin the bull story that it's because the country is "Growing" so rapidly (which a Lot of locals actually believe is a "Thing"...... Perhaps if they had half a brain cell, they would look at every other 1st world country in the world, and think "Hmmmm, so why is this only happening in this country", but alas, they don't).
Anyway, the areas affected at any given point in time seem to be such that at least the Fibre infrastructure stays up most of the time, so when I'm without power, the area that has the Fibre infrastructure seems to have power thankfully.
I eventually want to go off grid completely, and tell this lot exactly where to shove their crap electrical service, but that may take a while in getting to that point, hence I just started with something completely manageable and within my own capabilities for now.
I hope it inspires more people to tell their useless service providers to go to hell 👍🏻🤣
Shutting down the internet during the night might increase the power usage on the phones a little though instead, since they check stuff periodically and would have to use the mobile network instead - which usually is more power hungry given the distance to access point.
Now imagine the rest of the street, suburb, state, country. That’s a lot of power!
Here in the Netherlands we can read-out our meters with 1 second resolution. Ever since I have this, I've been monitoring like crazy. Still have a 250w phantom load, but now I know what it is and why I keep it running.
Yeah the P1 port is really useful, high resolution and no need to send data to your energy supplier or some cloud service.
If you know what it is, it's hardly "phantom load". 250w is pretty good though, I'm still doing about 340w at night. Mainly freezer/fridge, NAS and network (lots of unifi stuff). P1 port is pretty handy for monitoring this stuff, we have it in Belgium too.
just wondering if you have mains connected smoke alarms could they be part of the unaccounted watt usage?
My security cameras and WiFi system pulls 100w day and night... It's a big house with thick walls so almost every room needs its own WiFi ap. All internet thingies are fed through POE switch and it takes 60watts on its own. Workroom lights are are on most of the day : 4-500 watts. Some always in ventilators: 15-20 watts.
Planning to get some background systems on off gridish solar system like Dave did with fridges and I am getting miffed by the battery back I would need. Also the amount of solar it would all take to feed in the winter. Just finished the in grid system with 18KW panels. It's September with clouds etc and it almost doest feed the background systems during the day. No worries if there's any sunshine out. Than it can generate 100KW per day. But most of autumn and winter we would need thermal cameras to point at the sun. If winter generation numbers going the way I think it's gonna go- there's no point to even look at the battery solutions. I could spend tens on thousands on batteries that will be flat before the clock hits twelve on same day in winter. There just isn't enough winter sun to use in the house and charge the battery any significant amount. Better to just keep using the fixed prices to buy from grid and Nordpool prices to export the solar in the sunny season. Should generate enough prepayment to get yearly average to zero - ish.
I like Miele as a brand due to their design and repair mentality, though my first washing machine was a random 300€ one and it still works after almost 10 years of daily use at 1/3rd the price, so I don't see how Miele could do any better. Maybe one day I'll get some second-hand Miele as they do seem to last forever
I was using old cellphones as security cameras. They took 4-10 watts each. A lot of power when I had 10 setup.
Just a thought, for things that are only occasional use, get a mechanical timer type with the on/off pins.
Then, only put an 'off' pin at say 3am.
When you want to use the appliance, just use the override switch to turn the appliance on, will auto turn off later.
Not a good idea on computers tho' !
At night, my house eats about 600W, but the worse thing is that some devices consume about 1100 VAr almost all the time. It's good that I'm not paying for it yet, but I have to find the reason anyway.
Happy Dussehra
it would be a nice next video replacing that ness alarm power supply
Don't forget the capacitive leakage on all the house wiring... You may actually be able to measure that by throwing breakers to the different zones in the house.
Well done. My house has 120w phantom power even with the fridge plugged in, 24/7 120w burning, poor earth.
Dave if you do decide to turn the NBN modem off overnight you will also loose the land lines for that time, and then you would have the issue of if there's an emergency during the night you'll be without the landline
Good point, we do have NBN phones now. Actually, I think I may have missed the box for that!
I really enjoyed this video dave, its something ive wondered about for a while. Instead of all those wall worts do you not think it would be better suppling 12v, 5v or both right through the house, then using one power supply or a 12v battery with solar or wind to keep it charged.
This is exactly what I do with my off-grid power system. If a thing can run off 12V, it does, as that significantly reduces conversion losses.
And how are most people ever going to get low voltage wiring installed without serious work and expense?
I did the same some time ago, now almost every device that consumes electricity when idle is connected through switch, I calculated I may saved around 80 kWh per year. My parents did the same and in their case it's around 230 kWh per year. Now I'm jealous of UK electrical sockets - every socket has own switch.
Is your main feed fuel marked 60A/80A? I just had the 30 year replacement program around to replace my old bakalite fuse module with a new plastic one and replace the 80A fuse with a 100A fuse!
I've got home server + modem + ups which take about 40W and it's rare that my Amp meter show less than 0,7A @230V at night :)
You should combine as many DC powered devices as possible using larger "plug packs" but obvously only go as big as you need because higher power ones will have higher idle. This is why I have built DC distrobution systems. So do things like powering your fire sticks from other appliances with USB ports powerful enough. Or tap into a voltage rail on a device like the TV to power it up. For the WiFi Router and NBN Modem they should be powered from a single 12v plug pack then add a little RTC microcontroller with a mosfet to shut them down at the right times.
You should certainly focus on finding linear transformers and other linear regulators like your Alarm system and Garage Door Opener. I bet even the Aircon's could benefit froma MeanWell Industrial supply of the right voltage.
One thing to consider is if this energy is really wasted or not? I know it's soon summertime there, but here, at the northern hemisphere the winter is coming. So, what happens to this 120W? Well, it heats your home, as long as these gadgets are inside. Is it a waste? In summertime, sure, but from autumn to spring definitely not. Heating with a heat pump (air con) is more efficient, but I would not call this a waste, unless its summer. The closer you live to the poles the less you should worry about these. Old fridge? Incandescent light? Who cares if you are heating anyway...
Yes, exactly. As long as you keep the heat inside where you want it.
My server is heating my 3d printer filament-case so my filament is dried all the time. Otherwise I would need a (small but still) heater inside that case just for that function.
Well there are more efficient ways to heat up an home with electricity, an heat pump can generate (well not really generate, but move) 3/4 times the amount of power you put into it.
@@alerighi Yes, I know and it is actually in my comment.
Did I just watch Dave walk around his house measuring the load imposed by all of the usual things around his house?? Yes, I did that, and you did, too. There is something wrong with us. Why the heck do we find this interesting? Thanks Dave....
Hi Dave, I found at my place that the controlled load receiver was costing me 2w permanently not that this would be accounted for in your tests. 17kWh per year so I got rid of it and heat water by other means.