On Wed, 22 Apr 2009 07:48:44 -0400, George
wrote:

Snozz wrote:
I have a new digital meter on my little house. I am trying to figure
out how much electricity is being drawn whenever most of my appliances
are off. I used to be able to gauge this by how long it took one
revolution of the wheel on the old meters. On this meter there is no
wheel, just a LCD readout. It lists the kWh and a couple other things
I don't recognize. It is a Elster, and has the identifiers Type2SD
and also e239953, which I thought might have been model #'s, but I
can't find anything on these, like a product manual.

It would seem you have the information you need. Record the start/stop
meter reading and times for your observation. That tells you exactly how
much usage was recorded over that interval.
You may be forgetting the time it takes for such an observation.
Let's say his load when "most of his appliances are off" is 50 watts.
That means the KWH indicator will bump up by 1 every 20 hours.
Assuming, on average, it is half way to the next KWH when he starts to
look, all he has to do is stare at the meter for 30 straight hours
with all his appliances off! I think he was hoping someone would tell
him there was a way to measure something smaller than 1 KWH.