How to Do an Energy Audit

Tools for doing your own energy audit

The last piece of my solar array fell into place three weeks ago when the utility installed two new meters on my house, one that registers solar energy generation (for determining tradable credits) and one that registers net home consumption (for billing). So far, my array has produced as much as 8.1 kilowatt-hours per day, which is actually a bit more than the PV Watts calculator predicts for a system of my size. But the job isn’t over yet. It may never be.

Fighting energy waste is a never-ending battle. In an earlier post, I mentioned The Energy Detective, which measures the total electricity consumption of your house. To track down specific power hogs, a portable meter such as Kill-a-Watt is invaluable. With it, I recently went around the house checking how much power our electronic appliances and adaptors consumed in standby mode. Bracing myself for a torrent of waste, I was pleasantly surprised that most devices drew less than 1 watt.

The suckiest vampire proved to be the Wii (10 watts in standby mode), so we’re more diligent now about powering it down. A handheld-vacuum charger drew 3 watts even when the battery was full-up, so now I make sure to unplug it between chargings. A USB hub and UPS each drew 2 watts, and we didn’t really need either, so we removed them. It’s not much, but it adds up, and it’s easy to fix.

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