Reading the meter day and night is a pain, and there is always some little extra which scrambles the figures: a guest at home, a sudden need of washing machines, a full day out, etc. However, in the last months I could see that our daily consumption was usually between 11-12 kilowatt hours (kWh).

The Landis' smart meter

After checking all the usual suspects – oven, washing machine, dishwasher, iron, kettle, DVD player and toaster – I started to feel that something was not adding up.

How could we have already used 2.5kWh at 7.30am? Multiplied by three that was a good 7.5KWH consumed through the day without anyone extra living in the house. Could it really be just fault of the fridge and few tiny extras?

The first culprit was the bathroom ceiling lights, which get turned on at 6.30 at our place. They will have to become LEDs or something very soon, because they eat 0.5kWh a day.

But then, when I turned off my husband’s desktop, I could see a sudden a drop of 3kWh per day! Even my husband had to admit defeat, his beloved Apple desktop now stays off when not at use.

This discovery alone takes me a long way towards my 10:10 target for 2011.

Next on my list is insulating the hot water tank in the bathroom, so I'd better get started with gas meter reading!

I have also joined the iMeasure scheme, hoping to build some form of Ealing comparison, to see what other people living nearby are doing.

This case study is based on a post from Nicoletta's blog: ealingsustainable.wordpress.com