So how much power does my electric hot water system actually use?

You may not realise it, but your hot water is a significant component of your homes total energy usage. I didn't know just how much, until I started measuring.

You see, my two little boys, and starting to become mighty curious. Hot! Hot! Hot! water has the potential to cause nasty burns and all the good parenting manuals tell you to turn the temperature down.

As part of the energy manager project I've been building, I've acquired an effergy energy meter, a neat little device that clips onto the the power cables and counts all those electrons moving back and forth - the perfect little unit for my wee experiment.

I started as was, a scalding hot 80C (176F) degrees, logged data for a week, then wound it back to a toasty 55C (131F) and logged for another week.

At the warm temperature, my boys are safe and my shower is still great. The kicker is this - it takes 47% more energy to scald my ass! That is a remarkable fact.

At the end of this little hot water experiment, I was surprised, and the the data doesn't lie, on average per day each was:

• Hot: 9.9 kWh
• Warm: 6.7 kWh

Now, considering this energy is coming from stinky brown coal - this represents a saving of:

• 3.18 kWh
• 6.5 kg of CO2
• 15 cents per day

So go save some energy today, and turn your hot water service down. You will be surprised!

Sam,

@samotage

 

• hot water
• energy
• meter
• saving
• efficiency