On Nov 17, 10:42*am, Mike Clarke wrote:
therustyone wrote:
Does your house meter allow readings of
1/10 kwh so consumption could be checked by leaving the bulbs on for
several hours.

No need to take so long as that, you can check power consumption in just a
few minutes by watching the supply meter. The meter will have either a
rotating disk below the dials (if the old analogue type) or a flashing led
(if the newer digital type). Either way the front of the meter will be
marked to indicate how many rotations or flashes correspond to 1 KWh. On
our digital meter it's 1000 flashes per KWh, so if it flashed 1000 times
per hour (3.6 seconds per flash) you have a 1KW load and if the OP had only
his kitchen light with 2 x 11W and 1 x 8W CFLs (= 30W) connected it should
be 3.6 x 1000/30 = 120 seconds per flash. That's with a meter like ours,
other meters might have a different rate of flashes or turns but the
principle would be the same.

--
Mike Clarke

THanks for all the responses here...very interesting info. I'll find a
suitable time to power down the whole house ! and report back with my
findings by reading off the meter...