Energy Conservation Project--Our New Water Wheel

We currently have a water wheel that we made ourselves that charges some batteries. When we moved full time into the cabin, we realized that we needed to supplement our water wheel with a generator or two to provide enough charge for everything we needed.  With fuel at $4.00 a gallon or grid tied electricity at $.52 a Kilowatt Hour(kWh) and $6000 worth of utility poles, we're hoping to take advantage of the raging creek in front of the house more efficiently than the home brew water wheel we have now (see picture at left). So we ordered a new system: waterwheel, inverter, controller, meters, batteries, 300 feet of 3"pipe, etc.  I have lots of questions about this new set up and alas everything has arrived and been installed but the new wheel.  

Step 1-Ask a Question

For this project I want to take an inventory of our household electrical appliances and their associated watts and KWh.   My question is: How many and which appliances will we be able to use at a time with our new microhydro system's 6000 watt inverter?

Step 2-Google

As we have been into this project for a few years now, we already have some favorite sites, OtherPower.com, HomePower.com, Energystar.gov,  aceee.org,  need.org.  But a project I did with the school district kept running through my head.  The superintendent challenged the students to reduce the schools' electrical bill.  My job was to go around to the schools and teach the students about Underwriter's Laboratory and how to read the electric nameplate on every electrical appliance in the US, or at least in their school.  

With this information, the students were able to identify the power hogs at their school and the phantom loads (the energy appliances use even when turned off).  For every dollar of savings on the electrical bill the superintendent gave the money back to the students to spend how their classroom decided.  It took a little Googling, but page 28 on this site gave me the idea for the lesson plans about a year ago.  I have adapted that lesson to work for this exercise at our home.

Step 3-Determine data needed to answer question

I need to figure the wattage and time used for every electrical appliance in my house.  From this, figuring the KWh is easy enough to see how much savings we are getting from using our own system.  I also need to figure out which appliances have phantom loads or wall warts and figure this into the 6000 watt ceiling.

Step 4-Determine methodology for collecting data

Using the Underwriters Laboratory electric nameplates, I can find each appliance's amp and volts or it's watts.  Some formulas I will use in the spreadsheet will be:

Amps x Volts = Watts.  

Watts / 1000W/kW = kW   (kilowatts)

kW x hours used=kWh  (kilowatt hours)

I will also have to determine roughly how much phantom charge, if any, is being used by the appliance (Lawrence Berkeley Lab has a good list). Then I will figure the amount of time we use the appliance each year. The result will be kWh per appliance.   This will give me a figure of kWh to compare to our old electric bill (@ $300/month).  But more importantly it will give us a way to prioritize the appliances that can be used at one time given the 6000 watt inverter ceiling. I hope to figure out which appliance we can get rid of or which ones need to be replaced with more energy efficient ones.