If you are trying to cut down on your energy consumption to lower your bills, a good place to start would be to calculate appliance savings in your home. This will also help to see if buying new appliances is worth the investment and will save you money in the long run.
To calculate appliance savings you first need to check how much your local energy supplier charges per kilowatt hour. This price varies throughout the country. One kilowatt is equal to one thousand watts. So, multiply the number of hours that a particular appliance is used per day by the number of watts that the appliance uses and divide by 1000. Then take that number and multiply it by the number of days that appliance is used per year. Now multiply this number by the amount that your local energy supplier charges per kilowatt hour (kWh). Keep in mind though, that appliances like your refrigerator, although they remain plugged in all year long, only use electric when the compressor is running. Since the compressor is only running one-third of the time, to figure out their energy consumption divide the amount of time that an appliance is plugged in by three.
Here is an example using a laptop computer.
(Daily usage hours x Wattage) / 1000 = Daily Kilowatt hour consumption
12 x 50 = 600 / 1000 = 0.6 Daily Kilowatt hours
0.6 x 275 = 165 kWh annually
Larger appliances such as your washer, dryer, air conditioner, water heater and refrigerator use the most energy in your home, so start by calculating appliance savings with those first. Just to give you an idea of how many watts some appliances use while running at any moment:
- 40-gallon water heater– 4500-5500 watts
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furnace- 750
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ceiling fan- 65-175 watts
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portable heater- 750 -1500
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Refrigerator- 725
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flat screen TV- 120
One thing you can do to lower your energy consumption is unplug any appliances that you can when not in use. Even when sitting idle these appliances use some energy.
For any other questions you may have, contact Around The Clock Air Conditioning and Heating.
Our goal is to help educate our customers in Los Angeles, North Hollywood and surrounding areas about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). For more information about appliance savings and other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Resource guide.
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