Hi check it out. You can see that my house behind me is drawing 120 watts and I've got nothing turned on. Well, obviously something's turned on. so I thought I'd get a power Monitor and actually audit the entire house to see what's drawing 120 watts when everything's switched off or this fan of power stuff.

let's go and no, that doesn't include my fridges because they are being powered from my Eco Flow battery here. All right, let's start by ordering every single thing I can find connected to the mains and a lot of them might be sneaky. Let's start with the washing machine here because it's a soft button one so you can see that's drawing. uh, 0.4 watts.

And of course, residential customer like myself only pays for uh, true power in Watts Okay, we don't pay for VA right? We don't pay for apparent power so it's actually 16 VAR they're I won't go any difference between vir reactive and VA Um, but yeah, there it is right. 16 and a half Watts but I'm only going to be paying for that 0.4 Watts but hey, that's 0.4 Watts so add it to the list and this is not a standby. Appliance Really, it's an active uh one. It's the alarm system.

The Nest Alarm system: It uses old-fashioned wall wart like this so it's 11 Watts so that's chewing a huge chunk. The audio system for the back deck here and yes, you can hear the birds in the background Mrs EV Blog uses this for all her workouts and that's 1.8 Watts just damn way and 0.55 Watts for the dumpster monitor she uses for like workouts out here and my Zappy car charger. uh PC interface Hub that logs all the data is 1.2 watts and the garage door motor. it's got to sit there waiting for the infrared command.

um I've got my hang in multimeter here. What does it say? Uh, the 3.77 Watts thank you very much and the melee dishwasher? Wow, that's really good. 0.15 Watts Then you've got like the entertainment system in the lounge room and we've got like a Brother printer in here. We've got an Xbox we've got a DVD player uh, there's also a network Hub um in there as well that's being powered.

and of course the TV and the sound bar. and these are all like soft standby stuff. so I don't know I can maybe I could just like measure the whole lot and I forgot the Amazon Fire stick. Um, it's just sitting there in standby jumping around like a jackrabbit.

I'm going to average it out at like 1.2 Watts maybe and everything else combined. I'm actually stunned by this one. 3.2 Watts So that's the TV, the sound bar, the printer, the operational uh, Hub one of those little four port Hub things. um, the DVD player and the Xbox Wow.

Okay, I was actually concerned by this one. but no. I mean yeah, you could switch it off three. Well, it's still three Watts but geez, that's that's all right.

I Expect a lot more. One of these Dyson HEPA filter thingies uh, 0.2 Watts that's not too shabby. but once again, let the power factor on these is going to be terrible. There you go: 0.02 uh, power factor 11 and VA So and you know that current's got to come from somewhere bedside clock.

Oh, it's got one of these like um Sunrise lamp things but that's not on. The lamp is actually physically not on. Oh I Just noticed it was slightly on. Look, it's got one of these Sunrise things.

Oh, look, look at that five. Watts it's been chewing five Watts all this time and I didn't even notice that that lamp in there is partially on if. I Actually, it's just one button. press.

chase down to 1.8 Oh wow, that makes a difference I've been pissing away power they're not even realizing. Unbelievable. One of these. Brawn cordless.

uh, toothbrushes .66 Watts But what if I take that out 0.68 doesn't really make any difference. just checking that. the second one, which is a different, slightly different model, it's the same. And one of these Night Lights takes a 0.2 during the day, but if we turn it on at no, oh, it doesn't take much, it doesn't take much extra.

There you go, Just one of these, uh, random Warwick plug packs that we leave you know, hanging around just for convenience for like charging up phones 0.18 Watts You know it all adds up. Then the cordless phone you see here 1.25 Watts There's another plug pack that we use here for charging 0.02. Wow, that's a Sony Jobby. There you go.

So in genuine Sony That's not all. but geez, what's the power factor on that? No, look at that point. three Power Factor .08 VA What an excellent plug pack! Well done Sony Engineers. Wow.

And the Smeg microwave oven with its clock? Um, 0.64 That's not too bad, but still. Well, technically a toaster doesn't take nothing, but we're talking not 0.3 Watts 0.3 milliwatts. So yeah. I Just think we're talking about like a cap on that leakage in a cap on there.

and that's it. And just one of these battery chargers that we're too lazy to turn off 0.28 watts and my Lenovo laptop. Well, surprisingly, not much at all. We're talking like it goes from 0.04 or it just jumped up to two.

Watts Let's go. Oh one watt, there it's It's jumping around half a watt. like I could get an average consumption. but anyway, that uh Lenovo adapter that's really impressive.

Actually, the Metro hit does actually have a mean mode. There you go. Oh, we just saw it range up there so it's 0.38 It's climbing up so you know you could leave it there for a while and average it. but you know maybe I'll call it like 0.5 maybe might eventually get there.

And this large AOK external monitor ah, 0.25 and A ZTE uh Wi-Fi routery thing oh six and a half Watts Jeez, that's working 24 7. I Don't know why we leave it on at night I Don't think we actually have anything apart from like the Zappy Data Logger or something like that or the Um in Phase but neither of those work at night. so I don't know we could like switch that off at night. it's jumped up to 8.3 now and I found just like a random Uh plug pack there.

you can see it in the background. they're just not connected to anything I don't even know what it's for, but it's on uh 0.25 Watts about 0.4 Watts So Mrs EV blogs, uh, laptop power supply and the NBN modem. Wow. Well, 6.4 jumped up to eight there I don't know, can we average that to seven? but if you combine that with the Wi-Fi router then that's a significant power if you're not using in that overnight.

And second Amazon Fire stick with a random plug pack 1.8 watts and the second Sony TV Here, it's not too shabby. 0.4 Watts So you know that's the genuine Sony plug pack uh, power brick that came with it Microsoft Surface tablet here uh 0.8 second Surface tablet but it's not actually plugged into the surface. it's just the plug pack 0.12 Watts random plug pack I Found just for charging 0.02 Wow, what brand is this? Oh old school? Nokia Um, so yeah, it pays like we've seen Sony and Nokia in this particular case, like really good and other high-end uh Brands your reputable ones, they're they're actually really pretty. Schmick Once again, even on the VA, they're pretty good and you've seen a repair video on this.

We've got Huxley's Planetarium uh, two and a half watts and we've got a rainwater tank pump here 1.4 watts. and at to this point we have to come out to the fuse box here because we can't just plug in the power meter in series with Mains equipment anymore. These are like hardwired equipment. I've got uh, four aircons, um, at least one of which has a XS water pump um in it.

so they'll be drawing standby. they're not on, but you know they're going to be drawing standby card. They're sitting there waiting for the remote control to switch them on and then I've got my Solar Analytics monitoring system which I'm actually been using to I showed you at the start to actually monitor that. so I have to put a clamp meter on or something another way to do it rather than just get the differential.

Anyway, it's not hugely accurate. we're at the lower currents the solar analytics system so that like 120 watts is like yeah, there's a bit of play in that and then of course I've got my in-phase soul system which at night time, um, it's going to be consuming some power. but I've done a video on that. How much do the micro inverters take? I'll link that video in up here.

but once again I can get data sheet values for that I don't have to dick around trying to measure it. It's time to get into the the depths of the power box with a clamp meter and we can get onto um, like, various aircon things and uh, stuff like that. All right, just have a look at the Uh RMS current of the Um aircons. here.

we've got three air cons. That's the first one I Think that's uh, two aircons. Um, in one. So that's 177 milliamps there.

That's a decent amount. Of course, that's not going to tell us the Uh RMS power. The next one is 471 milliamps. Wow.

and this one over here. Oh, that one's the newest one we installed in the back room. Um, that's only uh 58 milliamp standby. And yes, because it's AC it's zeroed anyway.

I've got .13 there. Um, let's switch all of the air cons off. There you go: 0.1 So around about 30. Watts for those four aircons now, you probably can't see that, but the induction.

uh, cooktop on standby, it's about 38 milliamps. Um, once again, that doesn't tell us the uh, true, uh Power because um, this is just a RMS current measurements not taking into account the phase relationship. um with the voltage. but uh yeah, it's not much.

Then you've got the wall oven. uh, with its clock. that's about off what? 41 milliamps. Anyway, it does get rather ugly if you try to measure all this stuff.

but like if I switch off, um, all the air. Cons: If I switch off the uh wall oven if I switch, uh, the hot plate. no I don't think we use that anymore because we got a separate induction cooktop. I can switch off the induction cooktop.

uh down here I can switch off the uh Zappy charger down here so it's going to draw a significant um, you know I would draw something. It's like we leave it on 24 7 even though it's not doing anything so we can switch that off. We've got two light circuits here. so I can switch off both the light circuits because um, at least one of those has like a one of those sensor uh, lights on, um, standby.

Um, so yeah, we can switch that off or we can just have. We've only got uh, two main um Power circuits for the house so I'll leave those switched on. So I think I've switched everything else off except the um, solar uh, inverters at the moment. but I know what they take uh at night from the data sheet and also that measurement video that I did.

so no worries I just check them in my laptop here and it's still saying 0.12 kilowatts 120 watts So it seems to be I've hit some sort of bottom residual some bottom error limit I guess of the Solar Analytics Monitoring system I'm not sure what the deal is because I've turned off four aircons, an induction cooktop and oven, and any Lighting systems and it's still saying basically the same as what I got before. So yeah, nah, um, Unfortunately, the uh tool that we're using here is just it's just not going to cut it all right. I Gathered all the data here, got it in a spreadsheet, and uh, here's all the items and here's the uh: Power draw in the real power in watts and I get a 90 Watts total here and then I've also got an Associated uh kilowatt hour per day uh figure for each particular item and I have sorted this column by the highest uh Power things first. So you just saw in the clip before this, how are that Solar Analytics? uh thing.

when it was saying 120 watts, it didn't seem to. it was like like I'd hit some sort of bottom limit and I think that was because I'm I was trying to do that during the day and of course the Solar Analytics system has two current clamps for Import and Export and it's trying to get the uh difference. the differential uh figure trying to calculate in real time differential figure between uh those and it didn't seem to be working too well so I suspected it might actually be better at night and I did it last night and it was actually way better. So just before 11 p.m here, we switched off absolutely everything and it dropped down to 109.4 Watts down here.

So we got the resolution. We get an extra digit of resolution on there compared to what, uh, the app was giving us. uh, before? so you can see 109 Watts there, but that's actually 642. Um, VA So apparent? Uh, Power So you know that's like you're still 2.7 amps, right? You know that current's got to come from somewhere, but we won't go into that whole deal, right? I'm only being charged for that 109.4 Watts there.

Okay, and then I was able to actually switch off the air con. So this is what happened. Unfortunately, the timer reset um here and you can see I was at 109 here and then it just suddenly dropped down. So I switched off all four uh, aircons using those three uh switches that you saw and it jumped down to 85.

So then I was able to calculate the difference and get a figure for the air cons there, which is 24.2 Watts there. and then I was able to systematically turn off more things, turned off the zappy, and it turns out that there was a three watt differential there and this is actually a good confirmation so that three Watts actually matched precisely the data sheet value. Then I was able to turn the induction cooktop off, which has like a capacitive touch sensor thing so it's got some residual power there. There it is 0.8 Watts there, so that's not much.

Then I was able to turn the oven off at the drop down to 79 so the oven clock you can see it there 1.6 So I was able to get greater resolution there. so that was, uh, really cool. unfortunately. Um, I had issues with the five second interval because it'll only Solar analytics will only measure five second handles for seven minutes.

and even then it was intermittent. So that's probably like the 3G coverage because it's got a Sim in it. It's got to send the data back. It's not like a Wi-Fi uh thing that sends it over cellular anyway.

so that was really cool. So I was able to actually get all of these things on here. It turns out that the lights that sensor light I had I couldn't measure any. uh, really, anything major difference in there.

It was now full. so I don't know why there's a differential between the 90 Watts which was what I was able to measure and the 109 here. So there's 19 Watts unaccounted for there? don't know, Um, either. That's that's sort of like the lower end error in the Solar analytics thing.

But the good thing is I was able to measure a differential there in the solar analytics, so when you're measuring a differential, the absolute value doesn't actually matter, it's only the differential. The only way to do that better would be to get a current clamp for my Um Metro hit energy. Here you can see that actually supports two different current clamps here. you see the little symbol in there.

it supports a current Transformer so a current output current clamp. It also supports a voltage output current clamp as well. so it gives you a voltage output proportional to input current. But of course if you want to measure if you want the power output here, you have to use the current Transformer over here and it's got different settings in here.

I Can set a thousand to one, 101 or a ten to one or even a one to one uh Transformer So but unfortunately I don't have any ready Uh current? uh Transformer available I Could buy one of course a thousand to one Uh ratio give you a one milliamp output for every Uh one amp which flows through there. But if you're trying to measure low power devices like down in the Watt range, really, you know you'd want like a hundred to one or even a ten to one. Uh would be better. ideally a one-to-one but you know then it gets difficult.

Um I Really could not find a ten to one Transformer readily that I could actually buy I'm having difficulty find a hundred to one Transformer the ones that you get on Solar Analytics uh, systems, and the Zappy and all your home monitoring systems. They're usually a thousand to one, uh, ratio current Transformer and that might do okay. but anyway, I didn't have a spare one, but I I was able to get you know, reasonable, uh, accurate values that I'm fairly confident in using in the differential method. But yeah, I don't know the distance between 90 and 109 Watts I'm pretty sure I got everything in the house I'm pretty confident in that I can't see where you know an extra 19 watts would be going.

So what's the conclusion here? Can I actually save substantial uh Power like phantom power by turning stuff off at night? Well, yes and no. Okay, the air cons here. Um, they're obviously chewing the most at Uh 24 Uh, what's here and they're just sitting there like standby. But we do actually.

um in Winter And sometimes in summer, winter mostly, but sometimes in summertime we have the timer and Mrs EV Blog sets the timer for like, you know, 4 a.m in the morning, so you know it's uh, for the kids so it helps. Yeah, apart from that, like you'd need some sort of remote control like a timer based relay thing to switch them off at night if you weren't using that. So that's kind of inconvenient. so it kind of stuck with that.

Now, the nest alarm system, of course, is that that's only on at night time? really? Um, so in theory you could, you know? unless we go out during the day and then it'd uh, turn off. but it's probably too inconvenient to try and like turn that off and on with some sort of you know, timer or some other um system we don't want to. you know, go in there and try and switch it off manually when we come in Now, then you'd forget about it and then it's got a run from the battery backup and then, uh, it's just. it really gets complicated.

although you saw that that was a um, just a Transformer wall wart. so it's an AC output now. I could actually, um, just maybe, uh, feed in like a DC uh plug pack for example, like a switch mode plug pack into that and might be able to save significant power because I don't think the alarm system is actually taking like the piece like all the circuitry on there. you've seen that into the repair video.

I'll try and Link that in um here because it caught on fire because one of the ceramic capacitors in there shorted out and boom the Magic Smoke escape and all the sensors and things which are power from that. They're incredibly low power. so I think a lot of that power has just been wasted away in the fact that it's got an AC you know Transformer and linear Regulators I think so maybe there's something I could do there I might be able to slash that by you know, five? Watts or something. maybe? Um, And but the the big two here for my mind, are the Wi-Fi router and Nbm modem.

as I mentioned I Don't know why we need these switched on at night we're not downloading. you know, rare that you know I'd leave a PC on updated at night. that's that's not no reason to leave them on. So yeah, um, we could have a simple mechanical or an electronic timer on those that Swit simply switches all those, the Wi-Fi router and the Nbm modem off at midnight or whatever and then comes back on at like 7am or something.

Just these two alone has a total of 0.36 kilowatt hours per day. So you know if you reduce that by a third, you know there's point: one kilowatt hours. If you had a battery system for example, 0.15 or something like that, you might be able to save um per day. So you know if you've got a battery backup system, having those things running doesn't seem to be doing anything.

Um, the end phase Envoy that's uh, five Watts that's the envoy. uh system I can't I can't see any unless you had like a, you know, a timer in the fuse box or something like that. I don't see how I can turn that off really? Um, and then the garage door motor. You could add a timer to that For example: 3.7 A Watts You know you could turn that off uh, like at night time, but what happens if you have to head out in an emergency? you'd have to like, then somehow override that timer and it just becomes logistically a bit hard.

Um, yeah, we could, certainly, um, turn off the um, add a little simple mechanical uh timer in there I don't know how much those physical mechanical timers take I'd have to measure that or an electronic uh one, wouldn't you know? chew a huge amount. but uh, yeah, you could, certainly, um, add that and get get rid of three Watts there. But you're not talking a huge amount. You're talking point of seven kilowatt hours per day or something like that.

And and most of the time, we aren't using that actually. so it's better if we just like, maybe teach the kids because the switch is conveniently there. So if we just teach the kids to like switch that off and then if they want to, you know, use it. It's mostly them and the zappy.

Um, it's got uh, three. Watts but um, it uses a big mechanical clunken switch. You've seen that big 32 amp switch that's not designed to be operated every day, so it's not like, oh, when we go out like it's conveniently right there. but it's not like we can like, just switch that off and then switch it back or only when we need to charge the car, it's in where the switch out.

uh, you know it's it's just not designed to do that sort of thing. So and I don't know. not much I can do there. Maybe Huxley's Planetary in there? It's already got a mechanical timer I think I need to uh, adjust that actually so I can save some power there those um, stuff outside? Um, there's a convenient switch there so I could actually um Mrs EV Blog: Every time she wants to use it can physically just switch it on the Amazon uh fire stick.

Um, are two different Power consumptions here. You'll notice because they use different plug packs so it depends on which plug pack you got and stuff like the oven clock. Would you worry about that? Not really. Once again, I Don't see an easy way to get rid of that.

um, this rain water pump here. you could switch that off, but it's We have that on a timer based system so it does automated. uh Garden watering and stuff like that so you know to be inconvenient to sort of switch that off that zappy Hub I Don't really use it, but it's nice when like it. it stores the data.

um and I've occasionally gone back and used that data so I wouldn't like to use that I've got it. so why not leave it? you know, turned on cordless phones you've got to leave on and now we're getting down in into the dregs, right? Like, even like the microwave oven, for example, people talk about that, it's only 0.6 Watts Um, the Sunny Boy and Solar Analytics system once again, not easy to uh, turn off and then yeah, you know things like the washing machine and other appliances like that, they're really quite low. The monitor here 0.25 watts and as I mentioned, if you're like pinching every watt um, then you know, name brand Chargers seem to work better than the um, no name charges. So you know in the dishwasher down here is naphal and Dyson HEPA filter and stuff like that and you know I did include the toaster there, whether it's leakage current for the for the capacitor or whatever's inside.

uh, the toaster there. Yeah, now four. So there you go. It's interesting.

can't save a huge amount apart from um, turning the Wi-Fi I think I definitely will do I think the Wi-Fi and NBN modem. but apart from that, I probably wouldn't bother because then others are more like inconvenient. So there you go, that's interesting I Hope you enjoyed that audit of my house and let us know in the comments down below. um, what you've taken I've mentioned this on uh Twitter before and people have come back with astronomical figures like I think I'm doing pretty well to have like it wasn't 120 I think my the real one.

When we switch everything off, it seems to be like 109 Watts or even less than that. Um, ordered in. it could be as low as 90. so round it to 100.

What's uh, for example is what my house takes standby: I can and I can get that a little bit lower by taking out the Wi-Fi and NBN modem so it could get as low as 80 or 90. Watts Standby let us know what your house is doing. so I hope you found that useful if you did, give it a big thumbs up! As always, discuss down below and the EV log forum and thanks to all my patrons he'll help I pay for all this. Catch you next time Foreign.