What appliances in your home use the most energy?
Some appliances may use a lot of power but not a lot of energy? Some appliances use of lot of energy, but not so much power. How is that true?
Remember back to lesson 2 and the difference between power and energy. We saw some examples of looking at power ratings on a laptop charger at 100 Watts. Everything you plug in has a power rating, usually in Watts. Some items use a big power draw, like hair driers, toasters and microwaves, but we don’t use it for very long. Microwaves are typically rated in 800 -1500 Watts, but most of us only use them for a few minutes at time. So while their power draw may be large, the total energy used (in a day or week) may be rather small. Same is true for Toasters. How many minutes do you really use your toaster in any given week?
General rule: Things are designed to get hot tend to use a lot of power. Eg. Toaster, Microwave, Water Boiler, space heater ect.
Data Table for the Residential Electricity Consumption by End Use figure
The costs of the appliances in your home depend on how often they are used and what utility rates you pay. The average home in the US uses about 11,000 kWh of electricity per year.
Heating and cooling take on a large amount in most household’s energy use, so we will discuss them more in Lessons 9 and 10. Additionally, Water Heating is usually about 12% of an average household energy use, so we will discuss them specifically in Lesson 7.