Paul Mikulskis Home Energy Analysis Mr.

Njoku Due June 7, 2013

Conserving energy and using it appropriately is very important when it comes to minimizing your electrical bill, using resources efficiently, and decreasing fire risk. To understand how power is used in ones house, first an analysis of where power is used and how it is used must first be conducted, to later reflect on and improve the use and setup of the electrical system in place at home. The purpose of this project is to analyze the electrical layout of the home and how power is used in the home to minimize the electrical bill, use resources more efficiently, and decrease fire risk for a safer living environment. Our hose is about 10.3 meters in width by 6.2 meters in length, coming to an area of approximately 63.86 m. The energy lifestyle at home varies from person to person in our six person family. Our Mother likes to have the lights on a lot, but tries to remember to turn off the lights when not in use. She watches about 20 minutes of news in the morning, and then goes off to baking cookies for her business, with heavy machines that use very large amounts of power, however the result of her baking is always worth the power consumption. My siblings are very ignorant when it comes to power usage, they leave the lights on in every room they walk in, and have a low tendency to turn them off. The oldest of my younger brothers, John, is on his laptop for many hours a day, which uses a substantial amount of power to keep cool. My father is the best in energy awareness. He turns off the lights whenever he can, and is always sure to remind the energy thieves about their felonious crimes. Before this project, I was quite ignorant on how much power I use every day, however now after analyzing this topic I am much more vigilant to turn off appliances when not in use. Data is found by collecting the wattage, voltage, and amperage of each appliance in the house, which is found on the back of almost every appliance. After this data is collected, an accurate time estimation on how long each appliance is on for each month is conjured. With this

data, the kWh of the appliance per month can be calculated by converting the appliances watts, to kilowatts, simply done by dividing the amount of watts by 1000, and then multiplying by the hours it is on per month. Then to find the monthly cost, the rate per kWh needs to be found out by viewing the monthly electrical bill. Once this rate is found, multiply the kWh by the rate to find the monthly cost. The past four electrical bills are displayed in the table below. Month Cost February $75.43 March $82.51 April $71.33 May $69.74

The average of these four electrical bills is $74.75, with my calculated average to be $75.53 with a difference of 78 cents. There are many reasons for discrepancies. First of all, the usage of different appliances vary from month to month, for example one month we may grill more than use the oven, or put on the air conditioner more in a month such as May than in February, or use more heating in March than in April. Also, hourly estimations were not exact, but rather close estimations, while on the electrical bill it is an exact representation of the energy used by our household. There are some things that our family could do to save on energy and reduce risk of an electrical fire. One way to save more energy is to unplug devices such as a DVD player when not being used, which is plugged in 24 hours a day in hour house. Also, reducing the number of items on breaker number 19 would reduce the risk of an electrical fire, due to the vast amount of appliances on that breaker, and the old wiring used to connect these appliances. Also, since summer months are also coming up, hanging clothes to dry instead of using the dryer will greatly

contribute to energy savings. If for just one month we dry our clothes on the clothesline instead of the dryer, we will save 30 cents. .Taking shorter showers or using less hot water will result in less use of the boiler and heater, which every month on average costs about $1.95! If the piechart representing the breakdown on where energy is used in the house, it is evident that most energy is used in the kitchen. Using the oven indoors more often than doing something such as grilling or eating an item that does not require cooking will use less energy to cook, and will also result in less work needed to be done by the air conditioned to re-cool the house after the oven heats it up. Saving energy can be a fun task for everybody to participate in, and learn more about how to use electricity efficiently.