The results are in!

My trusty little Kill-A-Watt meter informs me that my 1996, 18.2 cubit foot GE refrigerator uses 3.13 kilowatt -hours per day. At my local utility rate, this refrigerator cost me $137 per year to operate.

Is that good or bad?

I don’t know. It’s time to check out some new energy star rated refrigerators to make comparisons.

I’ll let you know what I learn.

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.

Have you ever wondered if you should replace that old refrigerator for a more energy efficient model? Now you can find out which of your home appliances are worth keeping and which should be replaced.

We bought this handy gadget, an electricity usage monitor, which monitors the electric consumption of appliances in your home. There are several electric consumption monitors on the market.

We bought our Kill-A-Watt meter at Amazon.com. This nifty little meter is easy to use.Plug the meter into the electrical socket and then plug the appliance into the monitor. It measures your appliances energy consumption in kilowatt-hours. The Kill-A-Watt EZ even calculates operating costs.

To get a feel for how the meter works, we first tried it out with a floor lamp we use often. With the lamp plugged into the meter, we turned the lamp on for one hour. After an hour, we went to have a look. The meter recorded how long the lamp had been using electricity as well as how many kilowatt-hours it used during that time.

Our lamp used 0.29 kWh in one hour. It cost $0.03 per hour to use the lamp.

Next, we will find out if my old GE refrigerator is an energy hog.

Here are the technical details for the Kill-A-Watt EZ

• Shows the operating costs of your household appliances
• Accurate within 0.2%
• Calculates cost and forecasts by week, month and year
• Displays eight critical units of measure on the large LCD display
• Built-in battery backup

Try the Kill-A-Watt EZ meter for yourself!

A quick, low cost adjustment to help reduce your home energy bill is the installation of a digital thermostat that can be pre-programmed. Depending on the model you purchase, thermostats can be programmed to different temperatures for different times of the day or week.

If everyone is away from home during the day, program your thermostat for a higher daytime temperature in summer. No need to use precious energy cooling an empty house. Program the thermostat to automatically return to a cooler setting when the family returns home for the evening.

Do you have a dial-type thermostat similar to this:

If so, consider changing to a digital thermostat similar to this:

If you have an older, dial-type, thermostat that must be manually adjusted, it may be time for a change. Manually adjusted thermostats lack the accuracy of digital models. While you can manually adjust the temperature settings, how often do you remember to make the adjustment?

We installed a Honeywell RTH230B, which we purchased from our local Home Depot. The Honeywell came pre-programmed, but was easily programmed to the settings of our choosing. Since we are trying to reduce our energy consumption by 25%, we set our thermostat on 85 degrees during the day and 80 degrees at night. These settings may seem extreme to some. But when it’s a blistering 100 degrees outside, 85 feels pretty cool!

Stay tuned! We hope this helps reduce our home energy consumption.

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?