damage
Senior Member
not everyone has a fry's nearby (i have 5 within 15 miles of me to choose from
) + tax adds up to another 10% for some
Kill-A-Watt
- Thread starter Monk
- Start date
not everyone has a fry's nearby (i have 5 within 15 miles of me to choose from
) + tax adds up to another 10% for some
Monk
Active Member
I had one nearby a few years back when I lived near Phoenix - I really enjoyed that store!
not everyone has a fry's nearby (i have 5 within 15 miles of me to choose from
beelzerob
Senior Member
Ya beat me to it. Note that offer expires 2/25.
BraveSirRobbin
Moderator
I think it's depends on the person or situation. If I wanted one, I would gladly take your posted deal over driving down to Fry's and having to interface with their VERY WONDERFUL AND PLEASANT employees here in Las Vegas!
drozwood90
Senior Member
BSR,
My brother is in Vegas for another 5 months.
He's making the rounds to the Hotels. Said he wanted to have a "Summer of George" and stay in 1 hotel / week.
Pretty crazy!
--Dan
My brother is in Vegas for another 5 months.
He's making the rounds to the Hotels. Said he wanted to have a "Summer of George" and stay in 1 hotel / week.
Pretty crazy!
--Dan
Monk
Active Member
George only had enough money for a few months - - He must plan on winning some extra!
drvnbysound
Senior Member
I looked through all 7 pages of that post and didnt really find many (certainly didnt seem like a majority by any means) that are using an absurd amount of energy. Sure there were some who reported they had large homes, on in particular I recall being 6500sq ft. Sure those homes are going to require a substantial amount more electricity than others with average sized homes. However, its unlikely that someone with a 6500sq ft home is living next to someone with a 1500sq ft home.
I didnt feel like I was much different than many who reported to be under 60kWh per day - We manage to say around the 40-50kWh, and honestly at $0.11/kWh we really dont practice much conservation (at least 1 24/7 PC and against my opinion, my wife continues to leave lights and music on for our dog - during the day) and our home is 100% electric.
damage
Senior Member
i didn't say they were using an absurd amount of electricity. remember, those numbers are for cocooners, not the average person. compared to our neighbors, we're almost 2x their usage and we're running lean now at around 28 kwh/day (2 servers+tivo 24x7). our solar installer was chatting w/ some neighbors and they barely hit 130% of baseline usage (15-16 kwh/day).
We built our all-electric house with a lot of high-efficiency features: Icynene insulation, high-efficiency water heater, 19-SEER and 16-SEER with variable speed air handlers and zoning for A/C and heat, intelligent pool pump (runs 10x7x365), 6.5 COP pool heat pump, homeseer to control lighting at levels lower than 100%, etc. However, I have a lot of electronics, so with the DVRs, server, NAS units, PCs, etc., there are 22 hard drives running, many of them 24x7.
House is 3700 sq ft and for 2009 I used 24,257 kWh for an average of 67 kWh/day. Full cost (fuel, taxes, etc.) per kWh is $.117, or $8.18/day. I still have a lot to do with controlling these items with automation, but there's only so much time in a day and the darn job gets in the way. Overall, with this size of a house, I'm fine with $8 a day for energy. I've never heard from my electric company that I'm using higher than average amount of electric. For 2008 I averaged 62 kWh/day, but added more hard drives in 2009.
Kevin
House is 3700 sq ft and for 2009 I used 24,257 kWh for an average of 67 kWh/day. Full cost (fuel, taxes, etc.) per kWh is $.117, or $8.18/day. I still have a lot to do with controlling these items with automation, but there's only so much time in a day and the darn job gets in the way. Overall, with this size of a house, I'm fine with $8 a day for energy. I've never heard from my electric company that I'm using higher than average amount of electric. For 2008 I averaged 62 kWh/day, but added more hard drives in 2009.
Kevin
drvnbysound
Senior Member
Absurd was probably the wrong word.. should have simply used double. I guess I looked at it from the perspective that Im not currently utilizing any HA equipment... I dont have any servers running for any automation purposes, no media servers either... I consider myself to be that average neighbor and if I thought I would use 2x that amount by adding a server or two and other "cocooner devices" I might not even be here
I honestly have no idea how I could possibly cut my power usage in half to get down to those numbers. I would literally have to start getting rid of stuff like my microwave and alarm clock. Those neighbors using 15-16kWH/day must never be home, leaving the power usage to be minimum draw from their appliances or they are Amish using those free wood-burning fireplaces
drvnbysound
Senior Member
Even your numbers are impressive to me. As said, Im in a ~1500sq ft home and Im using roughly 50kWH/day (40kWH/day this month), and I dont have a pool (one of the things that I would consider to eat into usage) and I dont have servers/NAS/22HDDs running 24/7.
A pool is fairly common to have, so w/o considering that to be a "cocooners device", do you think you could realistically cut your power in half w/o eliminating NECESSARY appliances?
drvnbysound
Senior Member
To those who have a Kill-A-Watt or other power monitoring device, have you checked to see what a PC/Server uses? Im thinking along the lines of the servers running CQC or Homeseer and those for Sage TV or other for media - not a power hungry Cray supercomputer.
We all have different definitions of what NECESSARY means. I know it's the hard drives that are really adding to my costs. The DVRs are necessary to me, and they have six drives total, so I can't cut them. The server has five drives in a RAID 5 array, so at most I could pull one of those drives. I suppose I could get rid of Server 2003 and change to WHS and a two drive RAID 1, so that would save three drives. The server's backed up to a NAS with four drives in a RAID 5 array. Since I also continuously back up to the cloud, now, I could get rid of that NAS saving four drives, but I'm not ready to put 100% trust in the cloud yet. The two other NAS units are two drive RAID 1 arrays. One is used to store video from the security cams, so that's necessary. The other is for Media storage and I could have the main server handle that, saving another two drives. So in all, I could reduce the amount of drives from 22 to 17 right now. Even though I'd notice a difference from that, it certainly wouldn't cut usage appreciably.
In thinking, there's no way I could cut usage in half. I'm in SWFL, and use A/C much of the year, but we keep the temp at 78 when home and 82 when away. Plus, we have zoning, so that saves on A/C usage. We have a lot of landscape and accent lighting that runs from sunset to 10:30PM and then there are only accent lights that stay on, but homeseer sets them at 40% dim level, so they don't use much. I could get rid of them altogether, but they look really nice and are worth the money.
I don't believe in all this global warming/climate change/green living crap/hoax, so I don't care if I use more energy than my neighbor. I pay my bill to the power company, and that's all that matters to me. My only reason to get more efficient is to save some money. I don't do home automation to save money, I do it because it's cool, fun, and makes life better for me. We can try and convince ourselves that we Cocooners do HA to save money through better energy control, and that sounds good to our spouses when selling them on the need for the toys, but if you take into the account the cost of the equipment and the time we devote to it, the ROI is negligible.
Kevin
damage
Senior Member
Those neighbors using 15-16kWH/day must never be home, leaving the power usage to be minimum draw from their appliances or they are Amish using those free wood-burning fireplaces
i wish i knew what their secret was. my wife said how is that possible? the husband's an engineer. this is silicon valley. fry's is 2 miles away.