I’m using a really old fridge/freezer. Really old. I wanted to investigate if it would be worthwhile replacing it with a more energy efficient model. After the hot water heater this is one of the bigger power users in the apartment. I have been measuring the power use over the past few days using an MS6115 plug-in power meter. I will elaborate more on it in a later post.

The term phantom or vampire power was very newsworthy a few years ago. This concept refers to the small power draw from appliances that don’t turn off fully and use energy even when they aren’t really doing anything useful. An example might be a microwave using power to run it’s clock even when you aren’t using it to heat anything. In my apartment my phantom draw is about 100W. This seems really insignificant until you realise the cost implications.

<td style="text-align: center" colspan="2" width="130"> <strong>Price</strong> </td> <td style="text-align: center" width="65"> <strong>excluding GST</strong> </td> <td style="text-align: center" width="65"> <strong>including GST</strong> </td> <p style="text-align: left"> <strong>(First 16.45 kWh/day)</strong> </p> </td> <td style="text-align: center" width="65"> 16.3000 c/kWh </td> <td style="text-align: center" width="65"> 17.9300 c/kWh </td> <td style="text-align: center" width="65"> 17.0000 c/kWh </td> <td style="text-align: center" width="65"> 18.7000 c/kWh </td> <td style="text-align: center" width="65"> 106.0000 c/day </td> <td style="text-align: center" width="65"> 116.6000 c/day </td> <td style="text-align: center" width="65"> 5.

This video illustrates the amount energy that is required to toast a slice a bread.

How is energy measured? There are various units energy is measured in but they all fall into two categories when applied to energy consumption. The units either describe the total energy used to achieve something or the energy use per unit of time. Lets consider speed and distance. When I travel home in my car I might need to travel 10km. To keep to the speed limit I might need to travel no faster than 60km/h.

What is energy? In essence energy is the ability to do work. It is the thing you need to do something useful. The picture above illustrates this principle. If you have a box filled with a random assortment of coins it will take energy to sort them and neatly stack them on top of each other. There are two main laws that govern energy. The first law states that Energy cannot be created or destroyed but it can changed from one type to another.

There is this strange quirk regarding humans, they have an issue with limits. People don’t like having limits. They don’t want to die, they don’t to want keep to a certain speed on the roads, they don’t want to be told they cannot study neurosurgery because they don’t qualify. How many movies glorify someone overcoming limits and limitations – inspiring all of us to reach higher and further. I need to highlight here that there are good limits and bad limits.