Tasty power.

As I alluded to at the end of my last post, most of the week work has been playing with power.  I borrowed a power analyzer from work. 


To go along with my kill-a-watt that I had from my LAN party days (I forgot that I had blown one of them up). 


With those I have been taking measurements of most things in the house, trying to find out how accurate that 10kWh estimate is.  I don't have a final answer yet (there are still a couple of TBDs), but I have enough data to say that estimate was god-awful on the high side.  The short version of what I have found is that I will save on the fridge, water pump, lights, and computer.  I will directly eliminate the small circulation fan I normally run, the "dryer" fan, dishwasher, washer, water filter, air filter, electric kettle, and the Drobo.  I expect the TV and toaster oven consumption to increase (I didn't own the toaster oven the month I used as my basis).  I assume the microwave, AC, and sound system will probably be around the same.  All in all I am well below 6kWh a day. 

Matt brought up an interesting point about my desire to use a Tesla Powerwall though - It requires internet connectivity to be able to do things like read the battery status.  I will have only my phone for internet when I am travelling.  But Tesla also requires professional installation (they won't sell you one without a professional install), and to boot it looks like they don't support an off-grid setup, so I might have to go a different route, which is unfortunate because on paper they have the best unit by a mile.  So I have started to poke around building my own unit.

I also got my solar panel last night, so I will be setting up the power analyzer to measure it's output this weekend.  It is just a basic 100W kit from Renogy that was on sale on Amazon.