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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I’m blind and deaf and have no sense of smell but I can follow you around holding your hand. There seems to be a time shortly after waking that you’re shaking slightly for about three minutes, and this happens again before bed. From this, I guess that in this time you are brushing your teeth. It never happens in the middle of the day, so even though I cannot see or smell or hear, I have figured out that you brush your teeth twice a day, not three like your dentist suggests.
This is similar to how the power company can make a lot of good guesses about what’s going on in your house just by watching the electrical draw go up and down. A spike of a certain size that lasts 10-ish minutes and happens at regular intervals during the night but then irregularly during the waking hours is probably your refrigerator. Overnight it just needs to compensate for heat leakage but during the day people are opening and closing the door, hence the regular/ irregular intervals. They’ve also studied refrigerators and know about how much power they draw and if the first second of that draw is extra heavy. Turning on a light doesn’t take more power to get going and then less to keep going, but motors can.
Basically, they know what a refrigerator turning on “looks like” in terms of electrical usage, just like you can imagine what it probably feels like to hold someone’s other hand while they brush their teeth.
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