I have an experimental project in my environmental science class and I chose to measure my household's electricity usage. HELPPP?!?

Question

We must provide baseline data. My question is, for baseline data do i only measure what everything is before i actually start the experiment? or is baseline data included in the experiment portion?
ie. my tv's electrical socket was 123.3V in the morning and 122.8V at night (unplugged for 12 hours). So would my baseline data be 123.3V or both measurements?

Answer 1

Your utility meter charges you for watt-hours already, so just read the meter at the same time each day. If you have a smart meter, you can often get online hourly measurements from the utility company for your residence. You can even attach a counting sensor to the smart meter IR port and do your own data logging, possibly easier than copying the data manually from the utility website. You could save the data to an SD card with a time stamp in CSV form, and import it later into Excel for analysis (last source).



All electricity meters made in the last 80 years measure both the voltage and amperage to come up with watts. The very earliest meters did just measure ampere-hours though. So you don't need to measure the voltage and the current and multiply them together.

Answer 2

Electricity usage is in watt hours, or kilo watt hours. My utility is around $0.12 a kwhr. You can measure voltage but you get a bill for kilo watt hours, energy consumed.

Answer 3

WRONG ! BASELINE ELECTRICITY VOLTAG DATA IS 120V AC THAT WAS SET AS A STANDARD VOLTAGE BY YOUR COUNTRY. BEFORE, USED TO BE 110V AC, AND THEN RISES INTO 115V AC, AND AGAIN RISES INTO 120V AC TO COMPENSATE INCREASING USERS' LOADS AFTER EVERY FEW YEARS CAUSING HIGH VOLTAGE DROP ALONG THE LINE.

THE DATA THE YOU GOT EITHER OBTAINED FROM A DEFECTIVE VOLTMETER OR YOU DID AN IMPROPER MEASUREMENT, MORE THAN 120V AC IS QUITE RARE HAPPEN.