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One little thing that stuck out: The USA leads the way in terms of household electric usage in the world – an average US household consumes approximately 975 k
by perardi 4y ago
One little thing that stuck out:
The USA leads the way in terms of household electric usage in the world – an average US household consumes approximately 975 kilowatt-hours of electricity each month, three times more than for example the United Kingdom.
Which got me wondering how big US domiciles are versus those in the UK. Turns out: lot of big-ass houses here in the US.
https://shrinkthatfootprint.com/how-big-is-a-house/ https://shrinkthatfootprint.com/how-big-is-a-house/
2164 sq. ft vs. 818 sq. ft
Which sure would explain that difference.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoI am curious about quintile statistics, or at least median. Domiciles are definitely bigger in the US, but I bet the mean average is dragged way up by the top 20% of houses. Air conditioning also uses the most electricity in a house, and the US has a lot more populated hot and humid regions than many European countries.
- rippercushions 4y agoNope, electric heating uses much more power than air conditioning.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoI guess that is true, I just imagined so few domiciles actually use electric heating, or use electric heating in places that do not get really cold, that it is not a significant factor in national statistics of electricity usage. Seems like 40% of US households use electric heating though, which is way more than I expected. https://www.census.gov/acs/www/about/why-we-ask-each-question/heating/ https://www.census.gov/acs/www/about/why-we-ask-each-questio... Edit: fixed link
- hattmall 4y agoMost of that is going to be heat pumps in moderate climates.
- ericpauley 4y agoUnfortuntately not. In 2015 35% of homes used electric heating, with only 12% (34% of electric homes) using heat pumps [1]. So the majority of electric heating is actually resistive electric. [1] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=39293 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=39293
- hgsgm 4y agoBad link. But I'd like to see it by state. In Florida electric heat may exist but never be used, while Massachusetts needs heat and uses oil or gas.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoSorry, fixed https://www.census.gov/acs/www/about/why-we-ask-each-question/heating/ https://www.census.gov/acs/www/about/why-we-ask-each-questio...
- kahirsch 4y agoBy far more energy goes to heating than air conditioning, but a lot of heating in the US is natural gas (or oil in the northeast), especially in the colder places. About 43% of household energy use is heating and only 8% is air conditioning.[1] But for overall household electricity use, air conditioning is 17% and heating is 15% (all houses, not just all-electric houses). [2] [1] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/homes.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/homes.php [2] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/electricity-use-in-homes.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/electricit...
- jcadam 4y agoUp here in Alaska, heating your house with electricity would be asinine if you have any other option.
- foobazgt 4y agohttps://www.fool.com/the-ascent/mortgages/articles/how-big-is-your-home-here-is-the-average-home-size-by-state/ https://www.fool.com/the-ascent/mortgages/articles/how-big-i... claims the median in the US is 2014 sqft.
- flavius29663 4y agoYou would be wrong, even cheap houses in the US are quite large.
- kwhitefoot 4y agoHardly any airconditioned houses in the UK and heating is mostly by gas. I expect that accounts for quite a lot of it.
- Symbiote 4y agoIt will be a combination of the British climate, and the inefficiency of American buildings (large, poor insulation), equipment (little incentive to reduce energy use with better appliances, timers to turn off heating/cooling when no one is home etc) and lifestyle (clothes must be dried in a machine, not on a line, t-shirt-warmth indoors even in winter).
- nly 4y agoBritish homes are terribly heat inefficient as well.
- petesergeant 4y ago> the inefficiency of American buildings (large, poor insulation) American dwellings being less well-insulated than British ones in aggregate absolutely does not pass the sniff test: British houses are older, and weather in the UK is much milder than in most of the US
- tzs 4y agoI'd guess that a far bigger factor is that the US has a much higher percentage of houses the use electricity for room heating. I believe that it is similar for water heating. In the US there is also a high percentage of houses that use electricity for the stoves and oven and for clothes drying. A brief didn't turn up how much electricity is used for those things in the UK, but if it is like much of the rest of Europe I'd not be surprised if it is lower than in the US. In the US around 26% of houses use electricity as their only energy source, compared to around 9% for the UK.
- haupt 4y ago>In the US around 26% of houses use electricity as their only energy source, compared to around 9% for the UK. Something that was interesting to me when I moved from California to central Oregon was that nearly everything was powered by electricity. I didn't even know anybody with a gas stove in Oregon.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoI do not know anyone in Portland metro without a gas line to their house. Furnaces, stoves, and water heaters until recently use gas. I am guessing central Oregon may have been too rural for it to make sense to install gas utilities everywhere?
- haupt 4y agoCould be. We were also on the other side of an entire range of mountains so that may have also had something to do with it.
- phpisthebest 4y agoRural uses Propane for gas Midwest is a very common for most rural homes to have 500-1000 gal propane tanks. Propone is more expansive than NatGas but in cold weather it is still cheaper than resistive electric heat...
- vondur 4y agoThis seems to be true in the Boise Idaho area too. Our house was one of the few that had a gas stove.
- lm28469 4y agoNot only that, I used more heating in LA than in France (900m above sea level) because all the places I lived at had single pane windows that couldn't even physically close
- csunbird 4y agoI am using 1300 kWh per __year__ in Germany in my three room apartment, with an electric oven and cooker. That is a lot of electricity for a single home, even with electric heating.
- shric 4y agoI went on vacation for two weeks last month and unplugged everything except the fridge and one HP Microserver N54L and the apartment averaged a little over 4 kWh per day (~120 per month, ~1440 per year) However, when we are not on vacation the average is around 10 kWh per day. Edit: We don't use electricity for heating or cooling (Sydney, Australia) as it's included with the apartment at a flat rate of 10 AUD (6.61 USD) per month
- Symbiote 4y agoMy total electricity use for 2022 was 1500kWh, so 4.1kWh/day. Electricity for cooking, but not heating. My usage in 2019 was 1300kWh/year, but that was before regular working-from-home.
- jacquesm 4y agoThat looks like you need a new fridge. And those little servers can really add up, I had a Synology 12 bay NAS with a 12 bay extension up and running 24x7 and it consumed about 300W continuously.
- jacquesm 4y agoThat's really not that bad. Consider that my house - freestanding, about 200 sq meters - was using ~10000 KWh in 2020. I radically changed all that when the war in Ukraine started and the difference is huge, we are now negative with respect to the grid and still use gas but that will soon go towards a heatpump. Conservation cut our consumption (including own solar consumption) by roughly 70%.
- pandaman 4y agoHeating is not just air heating but the hot water and the cloth dryer too. I have these running on gas and in a hot month, when the water heating is pretty cheap and the furnace does not run at all, I still spend about 1000 cubic feet of gas (300 kWh).
- nonethewiser 4y agoIs that an average? I had no idea it was that small in the Uk. I mean, what is the point of a house at that size? It just seems like it might as well be an apartment unit .
- ClumsyPilot 4y agoI've been saying the same thing to anyone who would listen - 80 sq meter paaprtment is much nicer than an equivalent terraced house, you lose like 15m2 to staircases, its a total waste. Maij reason is the stupid leasehold laws - in UK you dont buy apartments, you buy a lease on apartment for 100 years. And there is a landlord of the entire buolding. And they can make up tlrandom rules, like forbod you from owning a cat or fish. Its lime tyrany of a medieval lord
- dukeyukey 4y agoPlenty of apartments are sold with commonhold or share of freehold too, it's not all leasehold.
- cultureswitch 4y agoWhat the fuck??
- leoedin 4y agoThat average is for all domiciles, so will include apartments - even studios. I would say a "standard" 3 bed house is bigger - usually 1000-1200 square feet.
- Symbiote 4y agoThat is a common and valid criticism of British houses. There are old Victorian houses built for factory workers, although most of the smallest have been demolished: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-up_two-down https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-up_two-down But they still build things almost as small now! [1] is wasting space on three bathrooms and a staircase, and has floor plans illustrated with what seems to be rather small furniture. On the same development they have some apartments. [2] is poorly laid out (the long hallway is wasted space) but still manages to have more living area and costs £65,000 less. [1] https://www.taylorwimpey.co.uk/new-homes/worthing/barley-grange-phase-4/plot-44 https://www.taylorwimpey.co.uk/new-homes/worthing/barley-gra... [2] https://www.taylorwimpey.co.uk/new-homes/worthing/barley-grange-phase-4/plot-53 https://www.taylorwimpey.co.uk/new-homes/worthing/barley-gra...
- b112 4y agoIt's so weird to use national averages here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35374014 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35374014 Above is a link for many Canadian and US cities. The range is enormous.
- yodelshady 4y agoEngland has ~25,000 sqft per person. That's the simple inverse of population density. Everything has to come out of that budget.
- okasaki 4y agoYou can build up... Unfortunately in the UK apartments are associated with the dirty poors, so people prefer to live in awful tiny houses over spacious apartments.
- okeuro49 4y ago> Unfortunately in the UK apartments are associated with the dirty poors No they're not. If anything they're associated with dodgy leasehold, dodgy management fees and dogdy cladding. None of which are usually issues in a house. Otherwise there are a lot of luxury apartments.
- Aardwolf 4y agoThe site contains a link to the data source (globalpetrolprices.com), which says: "The chart shows the price of electricity for households and businesses in over 100 countries. The prices are per kWh and include all items in the electricity bill such as the distribution and energy cost, various environmental and fuel cost charges and taxes."
- rightbyte 4y ago> 2164 sq. ft vs. 818 sq. ft > Which sure would explain that difference. The amount of stoves, fridges and washing machines do not scale with area though. You would expect larger houses having lower power use per square excluding electric heating and AC.
- lumb63 4y agoClimate control is by far the biggest single line item in home energy expenditure [1]. Hopefully in more moderate climates people can consider heat pumps and other more efficient technology to help with this. [1]: https://www.directenergy.com/learning-center/what-uses-most-electricity-in-my-home https://www.directenergy.com/learning-center/what-uses-most-...
- akudha 4y agoWhen visiting U.S for the first time, the thing that strikes you immediately are the sizes. Everything is bigger, much bigger in the U.S. Food portions - you’re left wondering if you ordered one single meal, or one day’s worth. Shopping malls - I literally got lost at Macy’s in NYC. Cars - why are cars so big, especially the ones in cities? TVs are big. Even mundane stuff like glue sticks - they come in 3 packs, I can’t buy a single glue stick in most shops!! Most household items come in big packs. Needless to say, all of this comically big items need space. So houses are big too!
- cultureswitch 4y agoUnless you live in a particularly hostile climate, house size alone won't change your consumption that much. Walls and floors don't draw power, appliances do. The big difference is that in Europe in general it is much more frequent to directly burn something in your house in order to produce heat. Something almost unheard of in Canada for instance.