Monitoring my Washing machine power consumption

Saturday, July 23rd, 2011 Steve's Stuff 2 Comments

I monitored the power consumption of my washing machine and was surprised by the results.

I have a Fisher & Paykel Excellence 7.5 Smart Drive electronic washing machine. I used a Clipsal EZAudit meter to monitor its consumption for 3 different loads.

When the washing machine is plugged in and the power point is turned on the machine consumes 9.7 Watts just sitting there in stand-by mode. Pressing the power button to wake it up causes it to draw 14 Watts. If I were to leave that power point switched on 24/7 the consumption per year = 85kWh

That 9.7 Watts is at a powerfactor of 0.43 so might appear as ~22W on a basic clamp device like a Current Cost EnviR etc that really display VA and not Watts.

(24 hours * 365 days = 8760 hours. 9.7 Watts * 8760 hours = 84972Wh / 1000 = 84.972kWh).

I washed every load using the same settings:

Cycle = Heavy Duty
Water temperature = Cold Warm
Water Level = Auto
Spin Speed = Fast

6 bath towels + 1 tea towel = 0.080kWh ~43 minutes
Extra full load of dark clothes (work pants, tops & windcheaters etc) = 0.095kWh ~45:30 minutes
Medium load of coloured (socks, jocks, t-shirts etc) = 0.077kWh ~ 40:00 minutes

If I used a figure of 0.085kWh per load and divide that into the 85kWh / year it equals 1000 heavy duty wash cycles wasted. Or 2.7 loads / day.

Tip: Turn your electronic washing machine off at the power point when it is not in use.

EDIT:

Oops, sorry I lied. I found out by accident that the 9.7W drops to 1.2W after ~15 minutes of inactivity.

So it’s only ~10.5kWh of stand-by load / year.

Or 123 wasted wash cycles / year. I guess it’s still 2.3 loads / weeks. Not much $$$ wise, but free loads all the same.

Tags: Consumption, Drive, Energy, Fisher, monitoring, Paykel, Smart

2 Comments to Monitoring my Washing machine power consumption

I used to work for fisher and paykel as I am aware fisher and paykel washers have the best power rating cause they go into power saver mode after 15 mins. The only other washer that beats that are traditional timer hand turned washers like a whirlpool. Anyhows good info for people wanting to buy or fix there washing machine

Washing machine repair sydney on October 4th, 2011

I really wish I knew what my washer was doing. I don’t have a meter and will likely just replace the receptacle with a outlet/switch combo just in case, but it’s scary to think what appliances do in thousands of homes and we never really know exactly how much they’re using.