I’m trying to make my house more efficient. I purchased about 10 Intermatic CA600 dimmer switch and deployed them. I’ve started experiencing problems throughout the house where I had a dimmer switch. I wanted to set the living room and bed rom ceiling fan/light with a dimmer switch, I realized that configuration was not good since the dimmer would leak electricity and would make the fan make noise. I remove the dimmer and added the regular switch again, and the problem went away.
I started doing research and discover that most dimmer switch start at 40W and end at 600W. This means that at minimum the switch would be on 40W instead of off. 40W is not enough to turn on a light fixture, but would make the fan still spin slowly. I tested this on an outlet switch by placing a hair blow drier, and at off, he blow drier was still functioning very low.
So my question concerning the power consumption, if the z-wave switch is 40W at off, that means that in a 24 hour day at 11.4KWH it would consumed .11 a day; times 10 dimmers = $1.10; times 30 days = $34.10.
If automating your home is more efficient, if your home was completely off, it would not waste any electricity, but if you deploy Dimmer switches, even if everything was turned off for a month, for 10 Dimmers, it would cost you $34.10 just to run the dimmers.
Those numbers are not correct. A dimmer will not use 40w when off, they usually just require a 40w load to operate correctly at lower dimming levels. When off, a z-wave dimmer should only use a small amount of current in order to keep the radio on. At least that is how I understand it, please someone correct me if I am wrong.
You are right that, some dimmers are less efficient than a regular On/Off switch. But, different dimmers behave differently and none, that I know of, burn 40 watts when “off” and “leaking”. You need to do some more research because your present understanding is incomplete and inaccurate. Do some research about thyristor and TRIAC dimmers. Also, do some research about the Z-Wave dimmers and the difference between those that require neutral wires and those that don’t.
Also, do some research into “greenwashing”.
Here are a couple of facts to get you started. Z-Wave switches and other devices will require, at a minimum, one or two watts just to run the Z-Wave radio and logic board inside them. So, you will always consume more power with these Z-Wave switches than a plain unlighted On/Off switch assuming the same usage.
When looking at power usage and dimmers; the savings, if any, will be from dimmed operation of lights compared to full brightness operation of the same lights. Just replacing the switch with a dimmer will not save anything significant if you use it at 100% brightness. Generally speaking, dimmers can only save watts by producing less light.
@jimmyb819 is absolutely right about using a dimmer on a fan. Just about every fan manufacturer out there specifically states not to do that.
But one questions, I have a two switch wall plate. One switch monitors the ceiling fan/light and the other switch monitors a standard AC outlet. If I turn off both switches, the light will go off, but the fan spins very slowly. Also, if I take a hair drier and connect it to the AC outlet, even though the switch is turned off, a small amount of electricity goes to the dryer. Not enough to fully turn on the dryer, but yes the dryer is very/severely weakly turned on.
Could it be that the switch is wired wrong? It was a two cable standard switch, and I wired them to the Blue cable and the Black cable according to the instructions.
I am purchasing two of those ceiling z-wave ceiling fan switch.
My first thought when I read this was that it obviously must be a wiring problem. But the answer is found in the answers already given. The Z-wave switch is passing a small amount of power from the black lead through the load to the neutral in order to power the Z-wave chip. When I measured my CA600 with a clamp ammeter a few weeks ago, I got around 0.04 amps which is a little less than 5 watts. This seems to be higher than others have reported, but the ammeter is probably not as accurate as an energy meter. In any case, this is probably enough to cause the symptoms you reported.
This is also another reason to follow the general advice to not control an outlet with a Z-wave dimmer switch (without a neutral connection). If you unplug the lamp or turn it off, the Z-wave chip loses power.
That “general advice” is usually a stern warning in the manuals. There is the high risk of plugging in a device that far exceeds the 600 watt rating of the dimmer, a device such as the 1500 watt hair dryer that he used for testing.
Note also that many/most dimmers are de-rated under different conditions like use in a multigang box. This means that your 600 watt dimmer may only be rated for 500 watts if installed with two dimmers in the box and only 400 watts if there are three dimmers. A similar de-rating occurs with those dimmers that have larger heat sink mounting flanges, like the GE/ Jasco and Evlove/Linear, that can be broken off to fit smaller spaces.
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