PoweredUp Electricity Demystified

If you've taken a look at the power consumption data we posted you'll know that kitchen appliances make up a very large percentage of electric power consumption in the household. Amongst kitchen appliances the refrigerator is typically the largest consumer of electricity. Since your refrigerator runs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year there is a substantial opportunity to lower your electric power usage that occurs as a result of your refrigerator.

Have you ever dreamed about getting a check instead of a bill from your electric utilityAn entity that sells and distributes electric power to end users including residential consumers and businesses.? It is possible. Net meteringA utility billing practice that allows consumers who generate their own power to receive credit for electric power generated in excess of their usage during a certain period of time. programs offer those who create their own renewable energy (via small wind, solar or fuel cell generators) the ability to get credited for the extra power they put on the grid. During hours when your home generator is creating more energy than the home uses your electric meter will move backwards. So you're automatically getting credited for the excess power you create.

Want to go green? Try going small when you move into your next home. We've just added new household consumption data that shows the pretty common sense information that bigger households consume more electric power. The thing is that when most people think about ways they can reduce their electricity consumption they look to expensive but ultimately optional options like replacing appliances or remodeling the home. Those choices can definitely help lower your power consumption.

We can't go back in time here at PoweredUp but we can load up historic electric prices for residential customers. This data won't necessarily help you make present or future decisions related to electricity usage, but we think its worth posting for those who are either just curious or want to do research. As usual the data is available in table, chart and csv format.

Quick, which appliance uses the most electricity in your kitchen? Okay, there's a good chance you know that its your refrigerator. How about the rest of your kitchen appliances? If you have an electric range it's likely to consume almost as much power as your dishwasher. Combine the electric range with an electric oven and you've got the appliance that is likely to be the second largest electricity consumer among your kitchen appliances.

One of the major goals of PoweredUp is to provide access to data about electric power costs and consumption. So why not get things started off with information about retail electric prices and fuel usage by generators? The newly minted data page has links to both of those things. We've got the most recently published retail electric prices for residential consumers. And we've added data about fuel consumption by electric generation. Both data sets are at the state level.