Off grid power use

[rcavictim]

Doesn't a 550 W PS on a computer just mean that it is *able* to put out 550 W?   If you put a Kill-A-Watt on it I'll bet you'll see much less.   Before we moved, I checked to see how hungry my server tower was, and it was drawing about 150 W.  (Now it's on a shelf in the garage.)

Oh, how old are the fridge's and freezer's?   Those old appliances are very inefficient, comparatively.

You are correct.  I actually need to measure the power draw with my Kill-a-watt meter.  I can tell you though that the 24" LCD monitor (5 year old Acer) and *new* tower (Intel Pentium D, their [and my] first dual core machine, two 2.8 GHz P4 CPU's in one chip) both put out quite a bit of heat.

I kill-a-watted the freezer a while back when I first got the meter and it was really miserly.

[LowGear]

Someone is a couple of decimal places off.  About a kilos worth I'd say.

I hooked the Kill-a-watt up to the projection big screen.  It idles at about 150 watts (.150 KW  ), but when the death star kisses it off the Kill-a-watt jumped up above 300 watts.  I've got a neighbor that is building pretty fast computers that use less than 50 watts and are almost silent.  My last love letter from the utility was 43 cents a kilowatt.  My server runs off a 60 watt brick - likes on a laptop but the fans are really noisy.

Casey

[BioHazard]

I'm thinking I need to take my shop off the grid, power company says I use a whopping 4kwh/day. That's only $7/month in electricity but the total bill is almost $30.   Just to get this wonderful service I had to put down an $1100 deposit because it's a commercial account. I need to turn that into solar panels and tell the PoCo to shove it where the sun don't shine....

[rcavictim]

I'm thinking I need to take my shop off the grid, power company says I use a whopping 4kwh/day. That's only $7/month in electricity but the total bill is almost $30.   Just to get this wonderful service I had to put down an $1100 deposit because it's a commercial account. I need to turn that into solar panels and tell the PoCo to shove it where the sun don't shine....

I can show you a power bill for my shop (commercial account) where the electricity usage was $20 and the total bill is $120.  Debt retirement charges, delivery charges, the fact that the earth revolves around the sun charge, taxes, etc. In that bill the delivery charge was almost $80. This is a typical shop bill because when I weld or use the lathe, compressor, etc., I'm powering it all 3-phase from the diesel genset.  This is Ontario Hydro for you.  Bastards.  Powerful incentive to finish my wind turbine and get off grid.

[deeiche]

I'm thinking I need to take my shop off the grid, power company says I use a whopping 4kwh/day. That's only $7/month in electricity but the total bill is almost $30.   Just to get this wonderful service I had to put down an $1100 deposit because it's a commercial account. I need to turn that into solar panels and tell the PoCo to shove it where the sun don't shine....

Are you still paying for Whoops, I mean WPPSS nuclear experiment?

[Tom Reed]

Since I work at home and the computer is on all day (hard to write programs with out it). There is a lot that can be done to conserve power with a computer. First use an LED back lit LCD monitor. The one I'm using is an LG 24" that uses 26 watts, which is about 1/8th the power consumption of a florescent back lit monitor. Then after much research we built a "silent" tower with efficient components that used heat sinks instead of fans. The total package is powerful, efficient and quite and only uses around 60 watts!

[BioHazard]

Are you still paying for Whoops, I mean WPPSS nuclear experiment?

Honestly I don't know what they're charging me for. After the basic charge, distribution and transmission charges (isn't that the same thing?) they add energy efficiency funding charge, energy efficiency customer charge, renewable resource charge, decoupling adjustment, income tax adjustment, boardman operating life adjustment.......just because we can charge whatever the hell we want adjustment.

There's still more, I have no idea what that crap is. I think I'm being charged extra for being energy efficient?

[mike90045]

....There's still more, I have no idea what that crap is. I think I'm being charged extra for being energy efficient?  

Of course you are.  Here in Los Angeles, whenever we have a water shortage, and are asked to conserve water, let lawns and trees die...  2 months later the water company is complaining they have to raise rates, because they are not selling enough water...   But when the drought is over, the rates never go back down...

[dieselgman]

It has been some years since I operated a household off-grid... but at that time with $0.90/gallon fuel oil costs and about $1.25/gallon gasoline we didn't mind running the Listers 24/7 - much different story now! We used a 6kW 2-cylinder unit run at near capacity during the day and light loads overnight. We ran through about 500 gallons of diesel in a given month plus oil changes and maintenance costs. At that time it was way less than $1,000 per month all-in. Not considered an outlandish figure for operating full-time power in the Alaska bush. If I had to do the same right now, it would be with battery banks, inverters, and only part-time reliance on the rotating machinery.

dieselgman

[veggie]

Our residence (House and Garage) uses 11 kw/hrs per day on average.

veggie

[David Baillie]

As things stand right now we are using 4-5 kw per day depending on laundry, computer use etc...  This year we splurged on a heating element for the chickens water so that's chewing up the watts (about 300).  Based on the original numbers at the beginning of your post you're suffering from the same problem I am; small continuous loads that got added over time to make life more comfortable/legal and end up consuming most of your power. 
Unavoidables:
Code required smoke detectors approx 1.5 watts each 4.5watts total =                  108watts/day
code required gfci outlets and arc fault breakers  1.5watt each 9w total=               324 watts/day
Inverter loss (damn thing can never go to sleep!) approx 30watts =                       720watts/day 
Fridge 19 cu ft with large freezer and defrost energy star Approx 800watts             800watts/day

Causes of Marital strife:
Satellite pvr receiver 30 watts/hr                                                                     720watts/day
Router/3g high speed connection 18watts/hr on about 12hours a day                      216watts/day
Monitor 45 watts/hr
Computer 35 watts/hr total varies
tv 80watts/hr total varies
Laundry approx 350watts/load approx .75/day                                                    262watts/day
dryer (gas) approx 350watts/load     .75/day                                                     262watts/day
                                                                                                       total:  3412 watts uncontrollable the rest is life...
I've recently been playing with timers to shut off the loads I don't need while we sleep and have been trying to move PVR events to waking hours and shutting it off at night. I changed out the on demand hot water heater for a direct vent tanked unit because of the continuous load.  I think we need to do better but we try...
Regards,      David

     

[BruceM]

I strove to maintain standard of living while reducing power requirements to the minimum for my 1040 SF  off grid home.

My daily power use:
From the small 12V system (single 100ah 12V battery, 65W PV):
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40 watt hrs from 12V system for 10 watt circ pump (in floor heating system). (Super insulated, double wall construction home.)

5 watt hrs - other miscellaneous 12V controls, audio amp, etc.


From the 120VDC main battery bank: (winter)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
937 watt hrs per day for incandescent lighting and rear projection computer/entertainment system.

I can't tolerate the more efficient phosphor-based lighting (white LED or CFL).

The computer is a FitPC2 which uses about 7 watts. The LED/DLP 200 lumen projector draws  about 45 watts. The all up power draw for my rear projection setup is 0.4 amps at about 140V as I type this. (56 watts)  The computer gear all runs directly off of 120VDC, with factory AC power supplies, so there are no inverter losses.

Refrigeration is propane, modified to be sealed combustion, and presently I'm running on the backup propane systems for domestic hot water and in floor heat.  They are the old 63% efficiency types- no electricity hookup.  I hope to add solar in the next year.
             
Water pumping and AC for laundry or central vac presently require running the 6/1 Listeroid (remote start, auto-idle timeout shut down).  Wood shop is all pneumatic, powered by the Listeroid. Fuel use is about 6 gallons per month at present, as I don't do much woodworking in the winter, though I do run the Listeroid for shop heat lamps when I'm doing electronics work.  There are no fans, anywhere, and zero phantom loads except for <10ma on the 12V system for my custom circ pump controller.

I hope to do a pseudo-sine 3 step low frequency push-pull inverter design in the next year, to pump water when the battery bank is full, and to be able to operate the washer.  The central vac can be modified to run direct off of 120V, with 12V controls instead of the 24VAC;  I just have to get around do it.

My battery bank is 100 AH (120V) capacity, my average DOD is 7.5% for the last month (January). 

I'm getting 4 years on Walmart (Johnson Controls) "marine deep cycle" batteries, $65 ea. x 10. for the main bank. These are rated 110ah, but that's at 1 amp draw. Compared to real deep cycle batteries they are maybe 50-65 ah. My custom system does the Peukert compensation properly, so when I say my average is 7.5% DOD, that's legit.

[David Baillie]

Wow bruce that sounds like an efficiency machine!  I can only wish...
David

[BruceM]

I do have a pretty big propane bill in the 3 coldest winter months, about $130/month average. Domestic hot water costs about 3x as much in the winter as the incoming water (uninsulated storage tank) gets down below 40F sometimes, and the tank/stack losses to cold air for the mandatory ventilation are much greater too.

Once I have solar for hot water and an inverter for pumping water and laundry, my annual fuel costs will be dominated by the $30/mo for the refrigerator, and diesel for my '85 MB 300D. 

[fabricator]

Here's a shot looking back the other way

Shameless hijack, Loyd, have you ever seen a Squatch up there?