Before you purchase that solar power system, you need to know how many panels you need to support your home energy use.

Soon after you begin the energy discovery process you learn about invisible critters called “phantom loads”  that haunt your home.

It’s hard to see evidence of these little devils but here’s a way to get visual evidence.

Make sure all the heavy electric energy users are off, like your heater or air conditioner and hot water heater and all your lights. Then go take a look at your electric meter.

I did this the other day while enjoying some free weather. The windows were open, our hot water heater was off, and I didn’t hear the refrigerator running. The house had this moment of unusual quietness.

So I went outside to take a look at the electric meter. And it was spinning! While it seemed all was off inside the house, the electric meter still indicated the house was using energy!

It was a visual reminder that those little phantoms were alive and well inside even though I couldn’t hear them.

The computer, (even when switched off), the microwave, the coffee pot (with its digital clock), all the digital clocks in the house, my sewing machine, etc, were all running as quietly as ever.

If you need evidence, watch your own electric meter.

Then go get yourself a few power strips!

In an earlier post, I shared about how to use a Kill-a-watt meter to determine home much energy your major home appliances are using. This handy electric meter told me my 1996, 18.2 cubit foot GE refrigerator cost me $137 per year to operate.

Newer, energy-efficient refrigerators cost only about $55 per year to operate. How do you know which refrigerators are energy efficient?

Look for the yellow and black Federal Trade Commission’s EnergyGuide label attached to the appliance you are interested in. This guide will tell you how much energy the appliance uses, compares energy use of similar products, and lists approximate annual operating costs.

Here’s how to read the EnergyGuide. Remember, fine print matters!

This EnergyGuide is for a 25 cubic foot LG Refrigerator-Freezer.

• The estimated yearly operating cost is $51, shown in large print mid-way down the left side of the guide.

• The simple line graph in the center indicates how this model compares to similar models. You can see that $51 dollars is the lowest and other models like this one can cost as much as $63 per year to operate.

• Below the graph in a small box is the estimated yearly electricity used by this model. In this case that is 476 kWh per year.

• Now the fine print! At the bottom of the guide the fine print says these figures are based on the 2007 national average electricity cost of 10.65 cents per kWh. I don’t know about you, but the cost per kWh is higher than that where I live.

• To find a more accurate estimate of the cost to run this refrigerator in your home, check your electric bill and find out what you pay per kWh. As an example, if you pay 12.6 cents per kWh to your electric provider, this LG refrigerator would cost you approximately $59.97 per year (476 kWh X .126 = 59.97)

• Notice the ENERGY STAR® logo in the bottom right corner. This logo assures that the appliance meets or exceeds the ENERGY STAR® level.

If this was helpful to you please leave a comment. Thanks!

How Our Simple Home Solar Energy Project Began

Our simple home solar journey began with keen understanding that governments are inept at finding solutions. People create solutions.

So we asked ourselves, what can one ordinary couple do? We are not among America’s wealthy. We live on a budget which tightens with the arrival of each month’s fuel bill.

Exiting the fossil fuel treadmill requires embracing alternative energy sources. They are solar power, wind power, waterpower, and biofuels. We knew that we would have to start where we live, with the resources at hand that fit our interests and abilities.

Not having enough sustained wind speed here in our part of Texas, wind power isn’t feasible. Our dry climate does not lend itself to waterpower. Living on less than four rocky acres, biofuel is not practical.

But what we do have is sunshine. And lots of it! Harnessing the lovely solar energy that pours on us each day seems the most practical alternative energy source for us. Our initial research revealed the costs of a PV energy system.

The keeper of the budget had a seizure.

Yet, we are unmoved. We want to go solar! We will find a way.

We began with what we call Phase 1, finding out just how much energy our home uses. Are we efficient or wasteful? How do we decide what is efficient? What is a reasonable energy efficient goal to work toward?

Our Phase 1 began with a basic energy audit. We did a simple do-it-yourself audit. We learned our energy efficiency could be increased by adding new weatherstipping and insulating the electrical outlets.

Now, using a nifty little Kill-A-Watt meter, we are finding out just how much energy the appliances in our home are using.

We post our finding here in these blog pages as we collect our data.

What alternative energy sources make sense where you live?

Home Energy Efficiency and Major Appliances

Eventually, I want a net ZEH , a house that produces as much energy as it uses.

We are taking the small steps toward that end goal. Our initial goal is to reduce our energy consumption by 25%. For us that means reducing energy use to 38 kWh/day. Reliable sources, like my energy provider, declare our major household appliances huge contributors to our energy consumption.

Using our handy new Kill-A-Watt meter, we are now testing our major household appliances—the refrigerator, freezer, and hot water heater.

Today we have our refrigerator plugged into our Kill-A-Watt meter. The refrigerator is a GE 18.2 cubic foot, frost-free, refrigerator/freezer. It was here when we moved into this house ten years ago. I estimate it to be a 1996 model. I find no energy-star rating on it anywhere.

After twenty-four hours, I will check the reading and see how many kilowatt-hours my older GE refrigerator has used. Multiplying that number by 365 days in a year will give me an estimate of the refrigerator energy requirements over a year’s time. This information will help me decide if buying a new, energy efficient refrigerator would be a wise investment.

Perhaps leaving the refrigerator plugged into the Kill-A-Watt meter for a week or thirty days would give a truer estimate. Maybe I’ll do that another day.

But just now I am anxious to find out what I am paying for my stand-alone freezer which is 28 years old! That’s next!

I’ll let you know how this turns out.

Heating water for your home accounts for roughly 25 percent of your home energy consumption. Since we are trying to reduce our home energy usage by 25 percent, we clearly need to do something about our hot water.

I will make a small confession here. I want a solar hot water heater. Here in South Texas solar thermal energy abounds even in winter! The Maker sends this lovely thermal energy to us on a regular basis and this mere mortal feels ungrateful not using it wisely!

OK. Tirade over.

My husband agrees using solar energy to heat our water makes sense. But he also wants to know that a solar water heater makes sense to our bank account. I do appreciate his frugality.

How much electric energy does our hot water heater use anyway? According to the energy guide on the side of the water heater, our tank uses 4992 kilowatt-hours per year. If this estimate is correct, we pay about $600 a year or $50 a month to heat our water.

Since we use our hot water only in the early morning and evening, my handy husband installed an Intermatic Mechanical Time Switch (T104R) on our water heater. First he tried The Little Gray Box but couldn’t get it to work. So he traded it for an Intermatic Mechanical Time Switch (T104R) , which he found easier to install.

The timer is set to turn the water heater on for three hours in the morning and three hours in the evening. We will see if this makes a noticeable difference in our energy consumption.

Three hours of heating water to 120 degrees may be more than we need. If we don’t run out of hot water, we will adjust the timer to heat the water only two hours each morning and evening.

More later.

Making an informed choice about solar home energy requires knowing how many kilowatt-hours your home uses. Until the recent concern with our environment and energy prices, many have never paid much attention to how many kilowatt-hours their home uses.

What is a kilowatt-hour?

Electric utility companies measure your home energy use in kilowatt-hours. Looking at my energy bill tells me how many kilowatt-hours (symbolized kWh) my home used during the billing cycle.

A kilowatt-hour is a unit of energy equal to one kilowatt of power used for one hour. For example, my floor lamp uses .29kWh/hr. That means, if that floor lamp remains on for one hour, it will use .29 kilowatts of power. The lamp would have to be in use approximately 3448 hours to use one kilowatt of power.

Today I called my home energy provider for tips on reducing my home energy consumption. The customer service representative I talked to was very pleasant and gave me helpful information. But the most interesting tidbit of information was about average kilowatt-hour usage.

My service provider, Pedernales Electric, says the average home uses one kilowatt-hour per one-square-foot of floor space. In other words, my 1700 square foot home should average 1700 kilowatt-hours of electricity per month. That’s 54.8 kilowatt-hours per day.

Other sources inform me that efficient use is 15 kilowatt-hours per day; anything over 20 kilowatt-hours per day is wasteful. The folks here talk about using 20 kilowatt-hours and less per day!

For the first 6 months of this year, I’ve averaged 51 kWh/day. By my energy provider’s standards, I’m doing well. According to others, I’m excessively wasteful!

OK. I’m on a mission. First things first. What are the high-energy users in my home? I’ll let you know how it goes.

What’s your average energy use?