Cabin Energy Consumption Spreadsheet

We have completed a list of all of our electrical appliances. Click here for the Excel spreadsheet version with formulas.  For the purposes of my investigation I really only need to know how many watts each appliance uses, but I included the weekly and yearly use to calculate yearly kWh. The primary use of this document will be for sticking on the refrigerator, so our 14 year old daughter can refer to it to see if there are enough watts available to run her curling iron when the refrigerator, lights, oven and computer are on.  (The answer is no.)

By looking at the UL electric nameplates I got the maximum wattage each appliance uses.  For example, when a refrigerator starts up it surges a bit and then settles into a lower energy use cycle.  Our inverter is designed for this, 6000 watts max with a 2400 watt continuous load.  So the watts I have listed on the spreadsheet really represent the maximum input the appliance would ever require.  For example, for my desktop PC tower to ever use 600 watts, everything would have to be running: all of the drives and some intensive number crunching.  I also have an old school CRT monitor.

I included the (potential) annual kilowatt hours from each appliance to get an idea of the savings we could incur by going off of the 52 cent per kWh grid. This annual calculation would be better served by looking at the power bills from our last residence, roughly $250-$300 per month.