I put the geyser, stove and aircon on an additional changeover as well, if Eskom is down for considerable more time for midway though a cook or deathly hot I still want these access the these amenities.
Just make sure that you trust that sonoff. I have heard of many a men that lost a whole fridge of goods after one of those went belly up .
Some considerations on the energy hogs
- Gas oven/hob works quite well and is as energy efficient. We have one now for years and we use 48 kg a year consistently at the current prices that about R 120 per month.
- We got a 1kw Kettle for the house , it takes a little bit longer but during day time it only runs of the panels.
- On the same volume of water the convection plate used more energy than the kettle , it was quicker but that is because the kettle is 1kw and the plate 2kw
- Bad fridge/fridges are the big energy hoggers in a house , especially the old ones
Here is a Bosh A++ (324 l) running
You will see that it switches on about 3 times in 2 hour @ 60 w for about 5 min at a time
that is Rounded up 30 min per 2 hours or 6 hours a day. (That is if it does not get opened up)
That will be 0.36 kWh per day @ R3 a unit = R 1.08 (60w*6/1000) or R 394.20
Compare this to an old fridge running (Similar size)
You will see that it switches on about 5 times in 2 hour @ 138 w for about 5 min at a time
that is Rounded up 30 min per 2 hours or 6 hours a day. (That is if it does not get opened up)
That will be 0.83 kWh per day @ R3 a unit = R 2.50 (138w*6/1000) or R 906.66 per year.
That is a difference of over R 500 per year.
- Security lights - 4 x 20w lights running for 10h = 0.8 units a day.
- Desktop Pc can be as high as 1 kw (Gaming stuff) , have that running for 10h - 10 units gone
- TV - Mine is fairly old Plasma and is running at 350 w and I have seen houses that uses the Tv as background noise
Bottom line is , it all adds up very quickly.
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Not if it’s idling. My PC has a 750W PSU with a space heater GPU, but uses <100W when browsing.
Old fridges/freezers can easily eat more than 2.4kWh/day = 72kWh/month. DSTV boxes used to draw 25W even when switched “off” - I don’t know if it is still the case with the never models. If you eliminate all these vampires, you save a lot in the long run.
Quite the addiction if you manage to pump out 10 hours of gaming a day! The thing with PCs, as with all things, is it uses as much as it needs. So you might find that even playing the most demanding games would only really max out your graphics card. That might be 350W if you’ve got a pretty decent card.
I’ve got a pretty good gaming PC from 2016. I don’t play much anymore, but it still runs all games I throw at it pretty decently. If I play a game I typically see the house’s consumption go up by about 300-350W in total. That is for all the components and peripherals. So it is alright in my case, as I don’t play much at all. Doubt the PC is even used more than 2 hours per week. I can imagine the story is a bit different if you’ve got a kid with all the time in the world playing games on repeat every waking hour of the day…
Now, if you end up getting one of these new Intel CPUs… the 12900K apparently likes to draw up to 250W (stock, not overclocked) at the wall when stressed (you would unlikely do this often)… now imagine trying to cool that amount of heat from a small surface as big as a CPU (the CPU die is even smaller than the heatspreader on top we are used to work with). Apparently people are throwing 360mm^2 radiators at the thing out of necessity, not hubris.
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