I've got a PowerWall and the Tesla app (which shows up-to-the-second readouts of your home's production & consumption), and it was shocking how little energy re

I've got a PowerWall and the Tesla app (which shows up-to-the-second readouts of your home's production & consumption), and it was shocking how little energy refrigerators and freezers use. Apparently it's because they're extremely well insulated; the compressor only needs to go on to adjust to changes in temperature, and if you don't open the door the temperature won't change much. There were a bunch of other surprises as well. The baseline load of my house is only about 200W (which seemed shockingly low to me, since I was raised in the era of 100W light bulbs), and it includes every laptop, tablet, phone, and battery charger that's plugged in; refrigerator and chest freezer; TVs and home entertainment on standby; nightlights and other small lamps we leave on; clocks & alarms; and everything else that's running continuously. Our gas heating system, however, uses 500W when on; apparently the blower is electric, and twice as much of a current draw as the rest of the baseline load. During the winter this is our biggest electricity expense, despite being "gas". Dishwashers and washing machines are basically rounding error. Household appliances like vacuum cleaners are also surprisingly low-current. Anything with a heating element is a huge draw though (1-2kW), and that includes clothes dryers, electric thermos, Instapot, microwave, oven, and toaster oven. I can tell when my wife is preparing lunch by looking at the Tesla app. If there's one thing you can do to save energy, it's probably to dry your clothes on a rack outside rather than the clothes dryer. We've got young kids so we do a lot of laundry, but in summertime probably 2/3 of our total energy usage goes to the clothes dryer, and in winter it's split between that and the gas heating.