By: K. Anthony Bissoon
Hello! So this is continuing from where we left off the last time. We had started on carrying out a simple home energy audit by your-self. By calculating how much energy you consume, where and how, you will be this much closer to saving and being smarter about your energy use.
So the first thing I need you to do is to make a list of every item that uses electrical power in your house, including every appliance, every light etc. Fill them up in a table such as the one I have below, and put next to each item, the amount of power in watts that it uses. In the next column, try to estimate the number of hours that the item is used for and put that in. Finally, in a fresh column, multiply across the watt rating of the item by the number of hours and you will get a figure in watt-hours. When you have completed this, sum up the watt-hours column, divide by one thousand since one thousand watts give one kilo-watt.
For constant load items, this method works well, but for varying load items, it’s just an estimate. For example, a light is a constant load item, but a fridge is not, so for simplicity sake, we will treat it as if, since how much energy it consumes depends also on the power setting.
So this kilo-watt amount is the amount of energy you consume over the period you put in hours, such as so many hours per week or per month.
