Your Yearly Power Usage in Kwh?

Question

Last week we did our electrical meter reading for the yearly re-balancing of our electrical bill (sidebar: here in Germany we typically pay a monthly rate based on average past usage at that residence, and that rate is adjusted up or down yearly), and i was somewhat surprised to find that we had used only 1077 kwh for the previous 366 days (about 10 of which we were not at home), which meant that we got a refund of very nearly half of what we'd paid in during the previous year.1077 kwh for a year seems somewhat low to me, and i know it's low for the US'ians in the crowd (most of which who have to deal with air conditioning costs), which has made me curious about average Geekdom power usage, in particular among folks who place an explicit focus (as i do) on reducing their electricity costs.To the best of my recollection, this two-person household has the following electrical usage:- a raspberry pi 4 for the NAS and various network workloads, hosting about half a dozen external SSD drives on two externally-powered USB hubs.- a pi5 for other network workloads- a second pi4 part-time for software development- a single Pi Zero acting full-time as a pi-hole server- the ISP-provided network router- two "mini-PCs" (an intel NUC and a generic-brand equivalent one). One is often, but not always, in "suspend" mode when not in active use. The other never is.- one Lenovo laptop (rarely on)- one 22-inch monitor- one 32-inch monitor- a small-format refrigerator (typical size for this country)- a two-range stove top- a water cooker (what some of you might call a "kettle")- 5 light sockets, each with a 4-watt LED bulb- a washing machine run 1-2 times/week, supposedly using about 0.45kwh/run- a handful of mobile devices (5 at the last count)- a couple of lamps we rarely use(edit: HN doesn't support "-"-style lists, apparently)We have no power-generation capabilities, e.g. no solar panels.To help me put this into perspective: are y'all's[^1] workloads and/or yearly kwh usage?[^1]: i'm a long-time resident of Germany but am not a native.

locallost · Accepted Answer

Also in Germany, four person household, we have been around 1500kwh per year for years now. Last year we actually spiked a bit to around 1550kwh, it was usually a tick below 1500. We are also away for at least a month every year, but we also have guests frequently.
Workload: everything except heating, we cook a lot etc. The thing we don't really use except occasionally is the dryer for the laundry. In general I try to be thoughtful about it, but not to the extent that it becomes a huge sacrifice. E.g. if I boil eggs I just switch them off once they start boiling, the remaining heat in the stove will last for the few minutes, no need to waste energy and it's no effort on my side. Obviously it's a bit different if you have induction, but even there I'd always keep the lid on. Tiny things add up surprisingly quickly.
Also in a shared office space where the six of us use around 1000kwh. The biggest waste is probably the old lighting but it's mostly used just in the winter.

DamonHD · Answer

For 4 of us in London (UK) last year:imported from grid: 1364 kWhconsumed (eg including local PV generation not exported): 3335 kWhSee: https://www.earth.org.uk/energy-series-dataset.htmlAlso maybe helpful: http://www.earth.org.uk/measuring-appliance-consumption.htmlBoth a little higher than recently because I shifted some of our domestic hot water (DHW) from natural gas to electricity.

486sx33 · Answer

Canada (southern Ontario) 1300 kWh hours a month in summer 1100 kWh hours a month in winter Natural gas for heating I&rsquo;d say 14,000 kWh a year 1200sf home, many people use a lot more power than that.