Re: Grand Apagon - Electricity (not) in Spain

On 30/04/2025 10:57, Don Y wrote:

E.g., our "average" (24/7) load is about 1KW.  Of course, that
neglects the peaks that we see OFTEN throughout the daylight
hours (night load is relatively small -- a few LED lights
plus my computers)

>
Different environment. The temporal average base electricity load of a UK home in summer is somewhere around 200W mostly less unless the kettle (2 mins) or immersion heater (1 hr) is on 3kW. By late afternoon the immersion heater will not be in use as hot water will be fully hot.

 We tend to have a lot more -- and a lot larger -- "static" loads.
 I suspect I have 100W in "Energy Star" appliances (< 1W while idle).
Dishwasher, refrigerator (with compressor OFF), stove, washing machine,
clothes dryer, 3 TVs, cordless phones, furnace, thermostats, freezer
(compressor off), microwave oven, garage door opener, etc.

Do you not have a realtime display of your power usage? It can be quite informative. I got one decades ago when they first became available. It paid for itself in about a year. I also have one that sits between a wall socket and an appliance - that also paid for itself PDQ.
Main vampire loads were several abandoned old transformer based wall warts behind furniture warm to the touch.
Worst offender by far was the TV which kept its TDVT decoder on power continuously by default consuming 40W rather than 4W in standby. A delve into the maze of twisty passage all alike that passed for its settings menu sorted that out once I knew about it.
My 24/7 base load for fast internet connection is about 30W. White goods, electric clocks and other IOT hubs take another 30W. Alarm is 10W. I have smart load based switching so that the main entertainment system is only powered up when either TV or main amplifier is on.
Garage lights which are old fluoros are the last remaining power hog - they clock in at 500W when they are on.

Add to that the equipment I have that "sleep" (instead of a galvanic
power switch):  three scanners, two digitizers, a dozen monitors,
a dozen UPSs (that likely consume considerably more than 1W even with
no load), several OTS NASs, six eight spindle servers acting as
NAS/SAN/ESXi servers, six workstations, 17 monitors, three media
computers (one for each TV), two dedicated ESXi servers, etc.
 Damn near nothing has a HARD power switch, anymore -- if it's plugged
in, it's drawing SOME power (my office looks like christmas when
the lights are off -- all these little red/yellow/blue pilot lights
scattered around the place.

Most of them with modern soft power switches are reasonably efficient. The odd one isn't - my previous PC sound system unless run *very* loud used the same amount of power whether it was "on" or "off" and it used a physical switch. I never bothered to look how they messed that up!

 And, the equipment that is actually running (presently):  this computer
is on 24/7/365 (it never gets a chance to "sleep"), there's a headless SFF
box hiding under one of my dressers that does my NTP/DNS/TFTP/xfs/etc
services, a microwave modem on the roof, five switches, one of those
workstations (with three monitors active), another SFF box sitting in
the living room (with attached monitor) downloading the most recent
"distfiles" (once complete, it will be powered down), one of those media
computers (I'm presently watching a movie, in bits and pieces),  etc.
 During the day, SWMBO would typically have yet another TV on with a
media computer (to watch the classes that she had downloaded without
being captive to THIS computer).
 

Domestic aircon is virtually unknown here. Fridges and freezers come in at about 4-500W but are very intermittent so a working average power consumption for a home is somewhere between 200-300W.

 Most homes have at least one refrigerator-freezer and a second refrigerator
OR freezer out in the garage or some other utility room.  I think our kitchen
frig/freezer is 23 cubic feet and the freezer adds another 16.  We tend to
keep things on hand instead of frequent trips to a store to "be fresh"

Again UK tends to be much smaller 6-8 cubic feet being a more normal size. We have a couple of 10 cu ft freezers one in the garage.

As a calibration point my base load is 100W with no computers on and twice that with my main box on and idle. I have a lot of electronic gadgets running 24/7 too so most homes base load ought to be less!

 Note my "vampire load" is likely comparable to your base load.  I will
admit to having more "toys" than many.  But, I also don't have kids with their
own TVs and computers in their bedrooms, etc.
 I think the monitors for one workstation easily exceed that.  And, the
workstations definitely so (dual GPUs, 4 spindles, additional PCI
cards, etc.)

Unless you do a lot of 3D rendering it is worth trying out the performance of Intel on chip graphics - for 2D work (apart from video transcoding) they are often as quick or quicker.

Why? We don't have any aircon and in the daytime so the only serious loads are the fridge and the freezer for a few minutes per hour.

 A frig is typically opened dozens of times in a day.  Each time runs
the risk of calling for cooling (we have three evaporators in our
frig so any compartment can call on the compressor).  Kettle (tea)
is 1000W, ditto (bread) toaster, hair dryers, microwave oven, etc.
Oven/stovetop vary -- based on usage (e.g., when I'm baking, its
on for several hours with frequent door openings -- to swap out
cookie sheets)
 A *small* "whole home" generator is about 14KW.  OK if you are
careful with your sequencing loads.  A normal home service is 24KW.

That is about the same in the UK for modern build. I tried to bribe the installer of my smart meter to replace my original 60A fuse with a 100A one but he said he was obliged to replace like with like. Upgrading to 100A circuit to support at home charging of an electric vehicle is one of their profit centres so they won't do it for free!
Our peak domestic load seldom goes above 6kW (immersion heater and kettle at the same time) - unless I am arc welding as well.
--
Martin Brown