I can’t find my gremlin

[ecofriendlycheapass.com]

I installed a few weeks ago and discovered an odd 60 watt draw on the same circuit as my fridge (yes its still there when I unplug the fridge). I literally turned off all other circuits last night and went around trying to find what was on but can’t find it. I have the feeling something is in the wall but hoping for ideas to find this power draw.

[emilya]

You think that’s weird – I’ve got a 60a 240v 2-pole breaker drawing a steady 4 amps between them all day and can’t for the life of me figure out what it is. My furnace, water heater, and accessory apartment’s stove are gas and accounted for on other 120v circuits. My electric stove, dryer, central A/C compressor, mini-splits that heat an addition on the back of the house, and sub-panel for the addition are accounted for on other 240v circuits. Both my fridge and the apartment’s fridge, and my dishwasher are accounted for on 120v circuits – I’m really reaching here trying to figure out what would be on a 240v circuit drawing 4 amps that isn’t a large appliance because I’ve accounted for anything remotely resembling a large appliance.

Finally I decide to run the risk of just shutting the whole circuit off and see if anything in my house suddenly stops working…checked the app and the 450-490 watt consumption is still showing steady. So either the CT is malfunctioning, or I’ve got a faulty circuit that is drawing half a kilowatt all day even when the breaker is flipped. Or I’ve read that sometimes people have encountered circuits that remain hot unless a second breaker is also shut off…

I’ve also got a CT on my sub-panel circuit which is showing a pattern a lot like it’s just got a refrigerator on it, spiking to 150-200 watts at regular intervals with 0 watt stretches in between, even though I’ve got a bunch of lights, air purifier, humidifier, surround sound system, two computer monitors, a huge TV, and a chest freezer on the sub-panel’s circuits.

The electrical panel is in my tenant’s space and she’s since returned home, so once she’s at work tomorrow I’m going to open up the panel again tomorrow and check to make sure all the CTs are plugged in firmly and the clamps are fully closed and all that, and get some readings off the wires with my VOM. (I already checked to make sure I hadn’t just mixed up these two CTs – flipping the sub-panel’s breaker has no effect on the mystery 240v circuit either.)

• This reply was modified 4 years, 11 months ago by emilya.

[ecofriendlycheapass.com]

Well that’s all kinds of weird. Could two circuits be wired together?

[coolemp]

Do you have hardwired Smoke/CO detectors in your home?  If so, I wouldn’t be surprised if you find that they are on the same circuit as the fridge.

I found this out when I installed my Emporia and found that one of my bedroom circuits had a 78W draw even when everything in the bedroom was off/unplugged.  Things clicked together when I tried to figure out which breaker my smokes were on :-).  Turned off the bedroom breaker and sure enough, my smokes all turned off as well….  From what I gather it is fairly common for the smokes to be wired on a circuit that isn’t likely to be turned off frequently (or ever).  In my case they are on the bedroom circuit since apparently my county requires them to be on an AFCI breaker and the bedroom circuits need to be AFCI as well by code…

 

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