How to estimate your homes power consumption

If you are like me, and you would love to take your home off the grid (get independent of the power company), then you will have to estimate the power usage in your home before you can decide what alternate power source you want to use. Here is how to estimate your homes power use.

Difficulty:

Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• calculator

1. Energy Label

   The power measure of a homes power usage is recorded in watts, and this figure indicates the maximum total power draw of all the fixtures and appliances being served in your home. The first thing to do is count up all of the appliance and lights in your home and make a list of each item. You should also include the water heater, furnace, any water pumps or water system devices as well - basically anything that needs power to operate. Make a list of these items as we are going to add up their total wattage use.

2. After you have counted out the lights and appliances in your home and made your list, we need to actually record the wattage each light and appliance uses. Next to the name of the item you put on your list we are going to write down its wattage use.

   For example:

   Refrigerator = 600 watts
   Lights = 400 watts
   Well pump = 1500 watts
   Gas Furnace = 1200 watts
   etc.

3. Check the labels or owner's manuals for each appliance's rating in your home, or go on-line and research your appliance to get a best guess estimate. Write down all of the figures you find in your owner's manuals, online, and on the labels next to each item on your list, or Better yet, measure the amperage draw with a clamp-on ammeter.

   For example:

   Refrigerator = 600 watts
   Lights = 400 watts
   Well pump = 1500 watts
   Gas Furnace = 1200 watts
   etc.

4. Add up all of the wattage uses that you have recorded so far, and then double check these uses.

   For example:

   Refrigerator = 600 watts
   Lights = 400 watts
   Well pump = 1500 watts
   Gas Furnace = 1200 watts

   TOTAL WATTAGE USE= 3700 watts without reserve power

5. Then, add about 20 percent as a reserve to handle the increased startup power requirements of most electrical devices.

   In our example, we had 3700 watts without reserve power. So with our 20% addition, we had about 4440 watts total use to power.

6. To get even more exact now, we want to calcuate the daily power use. To do this we need to multiply the hours used on the average day by the wattage that we recorded for each appliace and lights on our list. This will give you the watt hours consumed per day. Remember that some items, such as garage door openers, are used only for a fraction of an hour or minute per day. A 300 watt item used for 5 minutes per day will only consume 25 watt hours per day.

7. Now take your total daily power use for all of the items in your list, and multiply this by 365 to ger your total yearly energy use.

8. A typical 1600-2000 square foot home usually has an energy footprint around 50Kwatts per day, 1500Kwatts per month, and 18,000 Kwatts per year. When trying to determine an alternate power source, it is extremely important to get the ACTUAL power consumption of your home and not an average.

9. Visit My Solar Power Blog for more information:

   http://solarpowerprojects.blogspot.com/

Tips & Warnings

• You can also use this to determine how to use a power generator during emergencies, but you would only use a few items in your home, such as a well, a refrigerator, one light circuit, and maybe a furnace blower.

• It is critical to determine the actual amount of power used by the home to completely replace power from the hard-lines. An average will not work when replacing your power source entirely.

• I strongly suggest that you invest in a true RMS digital multimeter if you are considering making your own power. Also helpful are clamp-on type ammeters to diagnose the power usage of your appliances.

• Converting alternate power sources such as solar power or wind power is extremely tricky as the ratings are a bit different from hard power lines, and there are a lot of transformations of power. Please research this fully!

Resources

• My Solar Power Blog