Timely Results

Thanks to Frank at work, I was able to save myself the cost of buying a power meter that I'd use once or twice then stick in a cupboard to gather dust for eternity. Just as well I didn't invest in one (at least the one I was looking at, which is what I borrowed) as it's not really accurate enough to get real data about the power consumption of the electronic timers I'm trying to check...

According to the power meter, a TS-EE8 7-day electronic timer requires ~0.01 amps, ~1 watt. However, as these are the lowest values the power meter can record, I guess these figures are probably +/- 50%.

There are two appliances that I want to use these timers with. Both look like they consume fairly low power themselves. The manuals for both give power consumption at ~30 watts. I guess this is the peak consumption, as measuring them with the power meter gives normal consumption of 5 watts and 9 watts.

If the consumption was ~30 watts, and if I assume that the timer actually consumes 1.5 watts, then I'd need to ensure the timer turned the appliances off for more than 1 hour 12 minutes per day to save energy. Not long really. With the normal power consumption figures these times go up... More than 4 hours per day and for the 5 watt appliance and more than 7 hours 12 minutes per day for the 9 watt one.

I can do both of these quite easily, but it's just not going to give quite the saving I was hoping for.

Ah well. I guess I'll just have to go rip out the central heating and replace it with something more efficient instead. Say a geothermal heating system. Now that would save some energy.