formulas for energy audit?
Getting ready to a long trip next summer with a few nights boon docking and thinking generator, battery bank, inverters etc and know I need to do an energy audit for my trailer. Trying to put togethe...
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It's hard! For instance because I am an oldfart I use my bedside lamp more than any other in the place. Chickens, sunset and all that crap. 26 watt CFL. Hooked to shore power with 1st tier CFE electrical power costing a chin whisker more than five US cents a kWh, a switch to a 3 watt LED lamp would save me a whopping ninety three cents US every two months. Yeah I used a kWh meter to prove how ridiculous an idea this was. But the folks love electrical water heaters in this area. Draw a line with a 70 degree incline. That is how kWh hour price increases react to kWh usages. One careless month can cost sixty dollars. Yeah smart, heat twelve gallons of water to do two gallons worth of dishes. Three gallons worth of shower. Now realizing THIS is an authentic "Energy Audit". So is dumping a gas refrigerator that sucks 12 gallons of gas a month, involves a THIRTY DOLLAR refill trip plus two sixty a gallon for gas, for an efficient 12 volt refrigerator powered by panels and batteries. Want to heat something? Burn it, don't try to electrocute it. Want to light up something? Use photons not BTU's. Want to stay warm in bed at night? Well, tell me, do they peas in the can in the cupboard need to stay warm as well? Get chilly on the way from the bed to the bathroom at night? Ok, does the dinette set and television set shiver as well?
It's warm down here. An inside AC freon refrigerator gets equally as warm. Warmer in fact, and warmer and warmer trying it's little heart out to do what it's paid to do. So it runs all the time, driving electrical costs way up making the kitchen and house hell on earth. Stupid? Oh hell yes. So a trip to the hardware store, sheets of plywood, cut 2X2's, some screened vents, enclosed the back of the refrigerator. Cut two vent holes through 8" of concrete. Mother nature and convection did the rest
Reduced electrical bill an average of 165 kWh every 2 months.
Reduced interior temps of reefer so much, I had to twist the dial down 7 to 4
The refrigerator motor wears out one third as fast.
Kitchen temperatures reduced an average of six degrees F.
THAT is an energy audit.
It's warm down here. An inside AC freon refrigerator gets equally as warm. Warmer in fact, and warmer and warmer trying it's little heart out to do what it's paid to do. So it runs all the time, driving electrical costs way up making the kitchen and house hell on earth. Stupid? Oh hell yes. So a trip to the hardware store, sheets of plywood, cut 2X2's, some screened vents, enclosed the back of the refrigerator. Cut two vent holes through 8" of concrete. Mother nature and convection did the rest
Reduced electrical bill an average of 165 kWh every 2 months.
Reduced interior temps of reefer so much, I had to twist the dial down 7 to 4
The refrigerator motor wears out one third as fast.
Kitchen temperatures reduced an average of six degrees F.
THAT is an energy audit.
