The past few nights have been -5c and I've noticed via Smart Meter that the house is drawing 300W more than normal. As we normally draw around 70W with all appliances off, I wondered if the Inverter/Battery draws grid power for some kind of temperature control to prevent damage, and this would explain the extra draw in cold weather ?
All my kit is installed on an outside wall, in the shade.
Could the extra 300W be your central heating pump running for longer during the cold weather?
JonLees not in this case, heating had stopped for the night.
A simple way to confirm your theory, would be to turn the system off for one night.
How did you get to 70W, fridges, freezers, central heating etc. mine is 2-300 Watts minimum and I've checked all my appliances for excess usage?
@ted - basically, if the fridge pump isn't active, and the central heating has turned off, I only have LED lights. So when I turn all those off at night ...
I can see the fridge pump kicking in on occasion, but its really obvious because it makes a noise. The mains smoke alarms etc do draw some power, but they are minute.
I simply don't have any other appliances on at night.
ToothyChris - do you mean power down the inverter and battery ? I suppose thats one way of knowing, but I was hoping it was a commonly known thing :-)
L163023
Yes, that is what I meant.
ted I am similar to you! I know what 180w is - the network infrastructure. I don’t know 100% what the heating controls takes, but shouldn’t be more than 20w or so when off.
So need to find the other 100w. A work in progress!
anglefire I've spent a long time working around the house and switching things off but it's so hard to pin down, nothing jumped out. I dropped all my network but it was only a few watts, not sure what you mean by yours?
In the Summer with no lights or heating, I reckon it was fridges, freezers and the combined total of a lot of very small things like standby screens, network kit etc. but now the heating is on and it's darker it's even harder and undermines my whole system as I can't make it through the night on battery 🙁
ted I have a 24port managed switch downstairs with router, computer etc fed via a UPS and monitored by a smart plug.
I then have another 24port switch in the loft that is also monitored by a smart plug and UPS and that is for my NAS drives (3 for backups) and 3 RPI’s and a NUC as well as a WiFi AP
As I type there are 35 active devices on my network. Some wired but quite a few wireless.