Wishing I Was Tracked

Although being tracked doesn’t feel comfortable, today is one of those days where I wish I lived in a smart home that tracked my patterns. Currently my roommate and I are living in a big house with 6 rooms (4 of which are empty) and together in a month apparently used 800 kWh of electricity and had to pay $160 together. Given that we did not use our air-conditioner, we were very surprised. Since we could hear the air-conditioner running almost all day long from the other side of the house (our 6 rooms are one half of the house), we were wondering if their air-conditioner was connected to ours. We are looking into whether that is true or not. In the mean time, I thought I would do a little research on how much electricity home appliances use to get a sense of what the most likely culprits that drained energy would be.

Below are what I found online as average usage of kWh in households per year:

• Circulating fan =  4 kwh
• Coffee Maker= 9 kwh
• Frying Pan= 8 kwh
• Microwave Oven= 16 kwh
• Self-Clean Oven= 61kwh
• Toaster= 3 kwh
• Blender= less than 1 kwh
• Refrigerator 14-17 cu. ft.= 170 kwh
• Washing Machine= 9 kwh
• Dryer= 75 kwh
• Lighting 4-5 Room= 50 kwh
• Outdoors, 1 Spotlight, All Night= 45 kwh
• Vacuum Cleaner= 4 kwh
• Hair Dryer= 2 kwh

Now I generally get a sense that ovens, fridges, and dryers use a lot of energy. With power meters available, smart homes would be able to tell me where most of my energy use is coming from. It would be even better if it analyzed my living pattern and told me when I use most electricity.

This is exactly what Kamin Whitehouse envisioned — that smart homes would be beneficial for the environment — and I can do nothing but agree. Right now, my roommate and I know that we used a lot of electricity(although we are both usually out working), but we have no idea what to do in order to fix it.