An electricity baseline using Current Cost

It's been a while since I've had a Current Cost electricity meter but I've only just got around to trying to determine just where all that electricity is going. This morning, after much turning off and on of appliances I've got something of a baseline approximation for things which are typically on all day...

DTT set-top box = 10W
TV (standby) = 1W
TiVo ("standby") = 20W
2 cordless phone base units = 10W
Fish tank = (upto) 315W
Pump = 20W
Heater (on demand) = 170W
Light (on a few hours per day) = 125W
Halogen lamp (off) = 8W
Fridge/freezer = 70W
Microwave (standby) = 1W
Radio (standby) = 22W
Halogen lamps (off) = 12W
Wireless router = 16W?
Boiler (on demand) = 60W to 122W

The major users are the fridge/freezer (as expected), the fish tank and the boiler. The boiler is a gas-fired combi-boiler and I guess the electricity use from that is for pumping the water through though I didn't expect that to be so much. The fish tank is pretty expensive but the only constant drain is the 20W pump. Other big, but occassional users are the expected microwave, electric oven and kettle. Unexpectedly the kitchen flourescent tube was 50W.

So that gives a minimum baseline of around 180W.



My electricity use for one Saturday - the Current Cost graph is superimposed onto a timelapse video of our lounge with a soundtrack formed by some appropriate 50Hz hum (plus some noise) that has been modulated by the graphed values. Built with Processing.