other than the a/c and the fridge, what else consumes the most power?

[computeerrgghh]

I heard that all the electronics gadgets that are off but plugged in drain more power that you think, because every appliance requires power to instantly turn on. One month I am going to unplug all the appliances (except fridge) overnight and see how much power is saved.

 

[Mark R]

The big consumers are likely to be heating and cooling.

Having said that most fridges are pretty low consumers - I tested my fridge with a watt meter and found it uses about 20 kWh per month - admittedly, that's just for a small fridge. Freezers take a lot more.

Anything with a water heater is a big consumer - that usually includes washing machines and dishwashers (although these may have a hot water inlet, they tend to fill with cold or warm water, then bring the temperature up during the cycle).

Most electronic gadgets don't take very much individually, but things can often add up, especially if they have inefficient wall-wart type power supplies. If you add up TVs, VCRs, cordless phones, batt chargers, etc. - power used on 'standby' can be around 10-15% of the total electricity consumption for a typical home (that doesn't include the power used by those devices when they are actually in use). If you get in the habit of turning TVs/VCRs off instead of leaving on standby, then there are definite savings to be made.

A PC system is unlikely to use more than about 50 kWh per month unless you leave it on 24/7, or have multiple screens / multiple CPUs. You could double that if you leave a PC running 24/7. If you aren't running server software, or doing useful data processing, consider turning it off - it'll probably last longer too.