Looking at my electric bill, there’s a section saying “this percent came from [ex: Air conditioner, major appliances (fridge, oven), etc]”. How do they know that?
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Machines don’t all use electricity the same way. Example a AC motor has very unique finger print that it gives out as it runs – as in example your AC’s fan. Digital devices like computer’s power supply also draws electricity in a specific way – it does take a constant pull but rather more like pulses that it averages out in the powersupply to steady DC with the help of capacitors and diodes. You can imagine this like a barrel getting filled with water and as it empties from a hole at steady rate you only need add water every now and then to keep the flow steady. A heating element pulls a steady flow in both directions with steady changes in the properties because heat chancing the properties of the material element is made of, and that suddenly stops now and then as the thermostat shuts it off.
The electric companies have studied and sampled all appliances; then they can see from your electric meter the way you are pulling energy. They can break down the wave forms from the different phases (and ground if you live in places where the phases are in star formation (120V) and not in delta (240)). Since they know you are a residential power user it is with high likelyhood that you poweruse are from certain kinds of devices and looking at the energy use and waves in the phases they can pinpoint with fairly high accuaracy what devices you use.
When you use AC power, the load added to the system basically just only chances the relationship of voltage and current. These are very easy to measure and statistically break down.
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