Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Tracking Home Energy Use
Some people who have these meters post their home energy use on the Wattvision website, which allows us all to take a peek at how much energy people use in their homes.
If you go to http://www.wattvision.com/rankings, you can see there's quite a range of consumption. (It helps to know beforehand that a kilowatt hour is equal to using 1000 watts of electricity for one hour, e.g. leaving a 100 watt light bulb on for ten hours.)
Use per occupant on the list varies from 1 kilowatt hour per person per day all the way up to 90. That's a huge range in consumption habits. Then there's someone called "Electron miser in NJ" who's blowing us all away, consuming only half a kilowatt per person each day. My family uses about 2 kilowatt hours per person each day, so we're doing pretty well. Since we live comfortably, the range of consumption suggests there's a huge amount of energy that could be saved if people make an effort.
For those who like more technical discussions and a look at some of the data the meter generates, the company blog is worth checking out at http://blog.wattvision.com/.