Smart Breakers

Accomodation, House and Garden
1

I just got my electricity bill, and it’s gone up substantially from last year; that said, the per kW bill hasn’t changed so much.

That leads me to wonder where the power is going… especially as my heating is oil based.

I saw a few “smart breakers” (tuya, shelly, etc), that would be fairly trivial to install on the consumer unit. They would (in theory) let me see what zones of the house are the worst offenders…

That said, not overly happy putting something like that in a position of so much power. Has anyone done this? What system did you go with? Happy? Issues?

(as a side note, I somehow think it’s connected to my cooker - as one is induction and one is ceramic… as otherwise I don’t really have that much in terms of high power devices. I do have a few air purifiers which are always on, and a dehumidiier in the laundry room…)

2

It doesn’t even need to be smart, you can put something like this into place:

which will monitor electricity consumption very cheaply and not send your data into the cloud.

3

Use low energy LED lights?

4

I need to look into that, could be an option, but I need to find some that also function as breakers (those appear to just be monitors, and not have any overload protection).

Already do, since years.
The only things that use electricity that I can think of are:

  • dehumidifier
  • Oven & hobs
  • lights
  • air filters
  • robot vacuums
  • CCTV (though mostly solar)
  • IT (router, AP, 2x NAS units, and a few laptops)
  • TVs & consoles (though these are off/standby and I think low power)
  • fridges/freezers
  • air conditioner (only used in summer, winter heating is gas based)

The ones that I “think” might be using more than a fair share are the dehumidifier and maybe the fridges which are quite old (they were there when I moved in in large part)

5

An old-school multimeter? Multimeters measure amperage with clamps or coils for places with limited access. If amperage too high, look for the culprit.

Or if every device is off and significant current is still measured on the cables, it’s probably one of those devices that consumes while “off”.

6

Don’t you have breakers already? These are put in series with the breakers.

7

Too easy :stuck_out_tongue:

I do - was looking at the “low effort” option, of replacing the breakers with smart breakers.

Putting things in series will mean putting new consumer units with more space (as when I wired the house, I put one consumer unit per floor - in case in future I convert it to apartments - but also sized the consumer units to only have 1-2 free spaces in each one)

For reference… 4x people in the household, no electrical heating, and we use 10k kW per year of electricity, which to me seems fairly high.

I thought maybe the laundry - as while we don’t have an electrical drier, the washing machine is ancient (vzug from the cold war considering how it’s built), and with the baby it’s been running a lot at 90c…

8

Yeah. That seem massive. We are in the same situation 4 people. Oil for heating and water and I thought we were bad with about 5k kWH a year.

9

If you suspect certain items, you can just put a few meters on culprits such as the large appliances.

check there’s no hidden electric water heater. those things guzzle power.

10

Big hitters are large fridges and freezers, dehumidifiers, air-con, high-temp for washing machine.

You didn’t mention dishwashers.

Their energy consumption is recorded as quite low - if you run them on the economy cycle.
The problem with that is, especially with Miele machines, the water passages inside get clogged up with gunk resulting in flooding and then Miele will recommend a new machine.
The service guys recommend running them at high-temperature max washes which rather defeats the object of getting an A++ machine.

Our usage is embarrassingly high too so I’m going to investigate why.
I found one thing already - we have pipe heaters in our basement and they are currently on!

may buy a current clamp but to be honest, I may just look at the usage before and during the operation of any appliance with a pump/heater and note the difference.

11

Totally forgot about that one. We do have a dishwasher, and while we run it on the “eco” cycle most of the time, I do try to remember to run a monthly cleaning cycle.

That said, it’s also ancient, and I reckon due for a replacement with something newer…

12

Don’t ! That ancient machine could outlive anything newer. They don’t build them like they used to.

13

90 Deg is not necessary. Add an “active oxygen” bleach to the wash. If you want to sterilize cloth nappies then a couple of minutes damp in the microwave will do the job really well.

1 Like
14

The joys of cross-border shopping…in PT, I buy a generic (Continente) non-chlorine whitener–dead cheap at half the price of Vanish in AT–and it cleans particularly well at 60 degrees to sterilise bedding and towels. Put my kitchen sponges/bar wipes into the microwave several times a day.