Weekly Discussion: 13 May 2024

Negative aspect of having everything automated: I just found an anomaly in my energy bill... that started in December. But it's also a good thing about having a detailed spreadsheet: I track my utility bills, so the anomaly was obvious when I updated my spreadsheet. Basically, I'm using almost 2x the electricity now vs 5 months ago (800-900KWh now vs 400-450 before). They did replace the meter recently, so it could be that I can was being under-billed for a while, or maybe the current one is faulty. The net result is ~$50/month extra on our electricity bill. That's not going to ruin us, but it's still a fair amount of ongoing waste.

Now I just need to track down what's using so much energy. I'm thinking of getting a whole house energy meter (looking at Emporia Vue 3), which looks like it'll run me $200 + whatever I spend on installation (considering DIY). I don't have it yet, but I was already able to track down 100W+ extra energy usage by just using my Kill-a-Watt:

• my desktop PC wasn't going to sleep, which took 85-150W, depending on if the monitors shut off
• my work laptop (MacBook Pro) was using 25W when "sleeping" because of the power settings

So that's ~70KWh reduced, but I still don't know where the other 300KWh+ is going. I have a sneaking suspicion that it's my washing machine because I heard it making a grinding sound when it's supposed to be draining, so the drain pump may be faulty. The drain pump also stayed on today after the cycle, so that's also sus (first time I've heard that happen though).

Anyway, I'm going to try to DIY a fix.

Anyone else have a weird spike in energy usage? If so, how did you track it down?

Edit: I may have found it. We have a gutter heating system to melt ice/snow in the winter, which we rarely use, but I noticed it was on. I'm guessing my 4yo turned it on (she likes to flip switches). Hopefully that's it...

Edit 2: That was it. Looks like a simple light switch cost me almost $50/month. Hooray I guess for the smart energy meter my utility company installed, I now know exactly when my kid flipped the switch. :)

My most recent meaningless milestone:

With a 4% withdrawal rate, my current investment balance supports a monthly equivalent to my takehome pay of one paycheck. So I'm basically getting 12 additional paychecks a year from my investment balance.