Does it Really Only cost $14 to Operate my TV for a Year?

How many watts does the TV draw while turned on? What size screen?

I'll guess something on the order of 140 watts, used for 3 hours per day. And this would be a reasonable number.

Little things like this, taken just one at a time, don't cost much. Only the big things (electric heat, AC, hot water) and things on all day every day (refrigerators, TVs and 100W lights in some homes) cost a lot.

As a group, the little things are a problem because there are some many of them, far more than most people realize until they carefully go through the house and count.

 

140 watts X 4 hours X 365=204 kwh X .$08= $16.32 Sounds about right.

Interesting to note,, we use, in our small solar house that we live in 1/2 the year .6 kwh/day total,,, or about $.04/day worth of electrcity.

Icarus

 

The fridges, air conditioners, and resistive heaters are the big eaters. Check your fridge.

Kilawatt really ought to offer an inexpensive 220-volt version for big appliances.

 

That's about what my old 27" Curtis Mathes uses when it is on. Your annual cost sounds about right depending on usage and size.

I'm planning to upgrade to a widescreen LCD at some point, but they are energy hogs by comparison. Plasmas are far worse, unfortunately.

 

Tony, I hate to get all technical on you, but does that little gadget take into account the PF - power factor - of the device you have plugged into it?

I don't have a kill-a-watt but the cheap gadget I got from Manitoba Hydro is within about 10% of "real" power for a resistive load, eg block heater. It reads about 8-10% low according to my AEMC power quality analyzer, which takes into account PF and rms voltage

Hooking up an inductive load like a fridge or freezer, my power meter gadget reads low by 30-40%! At least according to the AEMC it does, and I trust the AEMC as it's a calibrated instrument

I haven't tried the cheap power meter gadget on an LCD tv load, or a computer load. Given how UPS's and most computer power supplies distort PF, I would expect the cheap power meter not to be very accurate at all

Looks like you're still alive. I was a wee bit concerned my Prius electrical schematics may have got you into danger.

Like the new avatar, she is a beauty! Baaaaaaaaa

 

Well if you really want to increase your cost/min only watch Pay Per View movies and WWF PPV's that should up yer bill.

What is the TV rated for on the back cover.. what is the units wattage.

Most small TV's suck relatively little power. Put that meter on something like a Wall Wart that's supplying power for a phone etc. see what that runs ya for a year. Then figure out how many of those little vampires you have sucking the life out of the energy grid and your wallet!!! rantrantrant! OKOKOK Those things are a little pet peeve I have. What ever happened to a POWER SWITCH that actually shut down ALL power to the unit in question? OFF should mean OFF! Not well I'm sorta off, but yer still gonna pay for having me plugged in even though I'm off HAHA!!

 

Quite reasonable, Tony.

The two things that cause the most problems: Big consumers like refrigeration (food and AC... Oh, and charging electric cars) and lots of small consumers that are on 24/7 like computer peripherals in "standby."

Medium-draw appliances like your TV that are only used occasionally are not the biggest offenders.

 

I have a regular Kill-a-watt (not the EZ). Yes, mine does account for the power factor. I can't say what its overall accuracy is across the range, but the things I have been able to check have matched within a few percent of expected values.

The only area it has shown an obvious weakness in is in low loads with very low power factors (vampire loads primarily.) Down in the 1-5 watt range I have to look at the volt-amps reading and power factor that it displays to get some idea of what might be consumed. (Reading LED consumption has been a no go.) There is some small load just for the meter being plugged in...and I try to account for that when measuring 2-4 amp vampire loads.

It's a nifty little device for the layman when you want to watch what an appliance is doing. I can see the near zero load on the fridge when idle, about 130W when the compressor cycles on...declining to about 95W before it cuts out. Another 120W for the lightbulbs when the doors are open...and over 390W during the defrost cycle. The new washing machine is fun to watch (can't believe I just said that) at different spin settings and when the pump kicks on (the pump adds about 60W each time.)

 

It's the little things in life you have to take time and enjoy them.

One mans romp in the sack with Playmate of the Year is another mans Spin Cycle!

We have all been there!

 

To make sure jayman has his answer, I'd like to add that the original (not EZ) Kill-A-Watt displays V, A, W, VA, PowerFactor, Frequency, and KWH and Time since it was plugged in.

My original unit seemed to have a noticable DC offset problem in the current measurement, and thereby everything derived from it. A power strip full of devices consumed more than the sum of the individual devices, by more than could be accounted by rounding errors. This also caused many of my wall warts loads read 0 watts. The offset grew worse and noisy, causing it to wrap around zero to 32.x Amps with nothing plugged in. A re-soldering of the current sense shunt fixed it for awhile, but it failed again. My second unit is much better, but is also hiding somewhere right now.

 

Hmmm...now if we could just get her to pose with the front loader...okay, it would be a somewhat non-traditional shoot. Tell ya what, I'll adjust one leg of the machine just a little off balance put it on extra-high spin, and blow her mind. :whoo:

 

I think I would prefer the Playmate of the Year on spin cycle.

Tom

 

Gotcha. I don't have a kill-a-watt, it's a much cheaper gadget that was briefly available through Manitoba Hydro. For the layperson, it's better than nothing and far safer than playing around with wires and ammeters, especially for those who are not versed in electrical safety

Inductive and reactive loads are the hardest to determine "real" power on. If you understand how to determine the impact of PF, inductance, and capacitance on real power, you can figure it out with a bit of math

 

That is SO true

 

Get in line, pal, I saw her first

 

alreet lads, educate me on this PF business. I under stand Power and Energy but I'm not familiar with Power factor (I know I could google this, but since it's been mentioned so many times in this thread, a definition would be helpful for the disembrained... like me).

 

I stole this lock, stock and barrel from my Solar forum, (Thanks Bill!)

"It has to do with the phase relationship between the voltage and the current... What the power company charges a home is not the kVAhr, but kWHrs (this is a good thing).

One way of writing the formula between VA and Watts is to use Power Factor, which is the Cosine of the angle between voltage and current:

VA*PF=Watts

For a resistance heater or a filament light bulb--the angle between Voltage and Current is Zero Degrees... Cos (0) = 1.00 (one). So, measuring the voltage and current with a simple meter will give accurate results.

VA*1.00=Watts

For motors, they are "inductive" which means that as the voltage rises, the the current will "lag" the voltage and start up a bit later. When all is said and done, depending on how far the motor current is "out of phase" with the voltage, there will be some sort of conversion (Power Factor) between VA and Watts.

For an electric motor the Power Factor may be as low as 0.6 PF. So, now the above equation becomes:

kVAhr * PF = 204 kVAhr * 0.6 = 122.4 kWhrs

Now--from here I cannot tell the Power Factor of your pump motor... If it was 120 VAC--the Kill-A-Watt meter would be a great way to measure the PV and the VA vs Watt reading for the motor.

It is possible to design the motor / capacitor set so that it runs near a "unity" power factor (>0.95)--but without test equipment (more expensive Fluke DVM or other)--it is not something that is easy to measure cheaply."

Icarus

 

hmmm... what the hell is the angle between V and A? That doesn't make any sense to me. I'm not grocking that at all. What does it mean that the current lags behind the voltage? Would an analogy to water flow be appropriate here for visualization? so if you have water flowing across a moderate incline and then sudden alter the incline (increasing it), there is a short period of time that passes before the water starts flowing at an increased rate (perhaps as the result of viscosity?). Is that it or am I wandering around in left field picking daisies?