I thought deregulation was supposed to lower our bills? :) Cool thing is we can choose our power supplier, I should start saving ~10% next month.

I did the Kill-a-Watt thing a ways back, I never found anything extraordinary in terms of draw, except..... the effing UPS ! you know, the battery backups for PCs and Tvs ? Those are humongous draws. I replaced 2 of them with regular surge protectors... After that, it was mostly Clothes Dryer and old fridge, and invariably the old A/C units..

I got a brand new A/C, gas water heater and new fridge within 2 months (coincidentally) and my bill dropped about $100 a month, year over year, about 40/20/40 % A/C heater and fridge respectively. The phantom draws were NOT significant for me. HTH.

What deregulation?

I'm not tuned into the MD market, but California is incredibly regulated. Virtually every generator, turbine, etc, has a California CARB version. The state is now decertifying old units which means even backup generators are being replaced!

If you make electricty (Solar, Wind, etc), the utility is forced to buy your excess electricty at the same rate as you would buy it. This actually increases the costs for other consumers in California.

One of the guys on the board and I were chatting about electric rates. California has progressive tiers for electricty rates. 0 to X, you pay A cents per kWh. X to Y, you pay B cents per kWh. Y to Z, you pay C cents per kWh. Over Z, you pay D. Wit this gentleman, the "D" rate was $0.32kWh! I pay $0.089 and it should go lower in 2 months.

For California, with all of the incentives and the ability to wipe out the higher end electricty tiers, it make sense to buy Solar Panels.

MD is semi-regulated now. We can choose our supplier, so that part is open, but the state still has their hands in the pot. Before deregulation, MD set rates and claimed free market would lower prices. Right, not sure who bought that one. Last month I paid $.089 too, I figured your # was much lower based on your bill info. My heating needs are surely greater though.

I looked at solar again and it still doesnt make sense for me. I like the idea, but the math just doesnt work for me. For now it's insulation and caulk/foam.

My house is relatively old as well. I have always been unhappy with the state of my electrical wiring. It isn't that there is anything really 'wrong' with it but it's circa 1950s, mostly aluminum (I think) and is poorly organized in the fuse box.

This makes me really want to have the house rewired; that way I could have rooms organized at the box and maybe even separate lighting from outlets. (I'm not an electrician so I don't know if electrical codes would support that sort of thing or not)

I've been looking at the home metering technologies out there and they seem pretty juvenile to me. I am going to start looking for some 'open source' projects to see if anything like that exists out there. It's a hobby/project time thing for me. Some of the things I have been considering is solar tubes in a few rooms where we usually have lights on during the day. Like my office. I want the privacy of my window shades closed but I would love the natural light in the room. I don't know if those tubes also bring in heat though or compromise heating and cooling insulation.

If I could get an snmp addressable energy monitoring device in the fuse box on each circuit I would be pretty much in heaven on the subject.

rPi project maybe?

SNMP Addressable power monitor? Then we wouldn't need a centralized management infrastructure. It could be polled from any computer on the network (assuming a secure SNMP implementation) that was authorized to poll the monitors. Maybe on rPi appliance could monitor multiple legs out of a panel.

That could be sweet.

SoCal has and had a very serious pollution problem - it costs $$ to clean that up. TX doesn't really care much about pollution and let's people pay for extra health care costs from the pollution. Another factor is that SoCal is not sitting on a huge pool of crude and NG like TX is, SB area notwithstanding.

Eventually, solar will lower rates in SoCal, but it will be a while.

Mike, which tier did you get into last month...this could be your problem:

101% - 130% of Baseline - Summer 0.07402 (R) 0.08671 (I) (0.00097) (I)
Winter 0.07402 (R) 0.08671 (I) (0.00097) (I)
131% - 200% of Baseline - Summer 0.20707 (I) 0.08671 (I) (0.00097) (I)
Winter 0.20707 (I) 0.08671 (I) (0.00097) (I)
201% - 300% of Baseline - Summer 0.24207 (I) 0.08671 (I) (0.00097) (I)
Winter 0.24207 (I) 0.08671 (I) (0.00097) (I)
Over 300% of Baseline - Summer 0.27707 (I) 0.08671 (I) (0.00097) (I)
Winter 0.27707 (I)

So if you go higher than 30% above your baseline, (which if I guess correctly, is a tiny amount) you are paying rates almost 3x higher than the standard, almost 4x once you get to 300%! That is crazy high!

I'd check to see how close you are to the next lower tier and aim for that since it looks like it will make a huge difference.

I just did a quick search and it looks like your baseline is between 10-16kwh/day (not sure what city you are in) so it looks like best case scenario, you are 100% over baseline, or 300% worst case

What year was your houe built? It was my understanding that NEC only allowed residential aluminum wiring from 1964-1974. My parents house in upstate NY definitely had aluminum wiring and nearly burned down from that! Afterwards, they had to have all electrical outlets rewired with a special kit to prevent future electrical fires.

10-16 kWh per day? I guess you can't run air conditioning there! That is a tiny amount of usage.

In the summer, my daily usage is around 110-125 kWh.

Are you watching my screen?!?! That's freaky!

Yes, rPi would be an awesome application for this.

SmileWavy


http://openenergymonitor.org/emon/emontx

James, the baseline is partially set by CPUC and partially the local utility. It is basically what our government has decided is the "minimum" amount of electricity needed to live...and I think that only takes into account AC when it is above 85(?) degrees, no TV, Xbox, pool, spa,etc.

It varies wildly depending on what climate zone you are in...some are as high as 42kwh/day and the average is around 20.

When I lived in San Diego, I didn't have A/C. M range was Natural Gas, as were my water heater and dryer. I expect my largest electric usage was my refrigerator follwed by TV, lights, micrwave and the bedroom fan. Of course I didn't have kids...

I have quite a bit of usage in that $.33 tier.

Last week I installed a new intelligent pool pump motor, and if I assume that most of that top tier is due to the old 2hp motor, I should see savings of approx $130 per month. The cost of $1700 installed and Edison will write me a $200 rebate check.

Next I will be looking into solar. Anyone got a good link to someone who will:
- allow some of the work to be DIY
- let you just pay for it outright - no leasing crap.

I have fallen over the home monitoring and control cliff ,

I'm building an outdoor reset thermostat based on this fellows system

Steam enthusiasts outdoor reset thermostat

Integrating Phidget sensors With an Arduino and Xbee mesh wireless modules..

Right now Im just collecting data, and learning the heat loss curve for my house which has an slightly oversized steam boiler. I have been able to wirelessly control a circulator pump with what I have built, but have returned all control to the main house thermostat while I work out the Heat loss equations and write some code to control the burner and pumps (on a hot water loop zone). Currently I have inputs for: outdoor temp, indoor temp in three locations, boiler pressure oz/in^2, boiler water temp, and energy usage for the burner

Sorry rambly and slightly OT but I am also using extra inputs to monitor the electrical usage of the burner and pump, fridge etc...

I started my learning about home monitoring when I found Tweet-a-watt made from a Kill-a-watt.. send energy usage via twitter

My programming skill set is from the Pascal/Delphi generation so this whole exercise is a pretty nice learning experience

I don't mean to hijack this thread, but are you also looking at water usage? We use 10,000 gallons of water a month (family of 4), which I think is outrageous, but nobody I ask has any idea how much water they use. Have you looked at your water usage?

Another question: My home video receiver/amp has an on/off manual switch. However, once manually turned on, it can then be turned on or off with the remote. Any idea if this thing is consuming much in this remote "stand-by" mode?

Water is on the radar but I started with power.

Wow, you must have a big pool or someone over sized that pump quite a bit...most house pools around here are 3/4 - 1HP. Really crunch the numbers on how long you really need to run it, most pool pumps I have seen run much longer than needed.