Help me find my phantom loads....

Hi guys. I'm still hooked to the grid 100% but want to move to solar. Obviously, the #1 rule above all else is to conserve power. With that said, my wife are practicing changing our lifestyle to see if solar is even something we want to consider in the future.

In the spirit of conserving energy we started our own "project." We took our last months bill and saw we used 1333 kWh. That was before we began our project.

Knowing that a new billing cycle was coming up, we went to lowes and bought CFL bulbs, 60 watt equivalent @ 13 watts. We bought enough to change every bulb in the house. Literally.

We then had an extra fridge in the basement that was running 24/7, but we never used it. We unplugged it. Then, *STARTING ON* the first day of this newest billing cycle, we cut our Air Conditioner off. Completely off. We now use 1 ceiling fan in the living room. 1 ceiling fan in our bedroom.

We spend the majority of our time in the kitchen (3 - 13 watt CFL bulbs over the sink and the occasional use of the oven and stove top.) When we leave the kitchen, we turn those 3 lights off. I have a Kill A watt meter that I have hooked up to the fridge and it uses exactly 2 kWh per day.

The next biggest thing/s we use is our entertainment center. Kill A Watt meter tells us we use less than 1 kWh per day on that. Also in our living room, we use a single lamp running the same 13 watt CFL bulb. We turn it on when we get home from work, and turn it off before we go to bed. You can assume the lamp uses minimal power.....

Upstairs in our bedroom, we run that one ceiling fan, but only when we sleep. During the day it is turned off. We run the TV and DVR about 3 hrs per night up there and then it shuts off. The TV is a flat screen with power saving mode in place. I have not run the Kill A Watt meter on it yet but can we assume it uses at most 1 kWh per day??? A reasonable assumption I think......

I told you all that to tell you this, since implementing this "project", we have cut our power usage from 44 kWh per day, down to roughly 13 kWh per day. :cool::D

We don't run the air conditioner at all now. Logically thinking, the Fridge is the next power hog @ 2 kWh per day. The entertainment center @ roughly 1 kWh per day and and the upstairs TV/DVR @ 1 kWh per day (being generous) along with the kitchen lights and 1 lamp in the living room and ceiling fans I'll be generous again and throw in another 1 kWh per day...... that's 5 kWh per day.

Our power company shows us on their website how much power we use daily. (neat feature) I'm coming up with 5 kWh per day, being generous, but our power company is showing us at around 13 kWh per day, with our minimum being 10.2 kWh on one day.

Obviously, we are thrilled that we have GASHED our power consumption, but I cannot for the life of me figure out WHERE the other 8 kWh per day are coming from.

I would think now that we have killed the air condition, the next biggest thing would be the Fridge (and Kill A Watt has confirmed this) and it only comes in at 2 kWh per day.

We don't have any other "major" appliances running 24/7. We have new, stand up energy efficient clothes washer and dryer and we use it maybe 3 times a week. We run our dishwasher maybe twice a week.

We have a cable modem and wireless router > drop in the bucket > certainly not 8 kWh per day usage.......

So where is this "extra" power going? I'm at a loss at this point. Sorry for the long post but I wanted to be thorough. Water heater you say? > Gas. Not electric.

So what are some other power hogs that I am simply overlooking? Surely, I cannot be overlooking close to 8 kWh per day when I have checked every room in the house. I always come back to the same conclusion, the fridge HAS TO BE our biggest energy user per day, bar none. So where is the rest going? Help.

Thanks.