Using Field-Metered Data to Characterize Consumer Usage Patterns of Residential Dishwashers

Pecan Street's field-metered data offer an opportunity to track actual appliance usage patterns and energy consumption over multiple years, and can supplement data from the US Energy Information Administration's Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS). This report is based on dishwasher metering data collected from more than 500 households located in Texas, California, New York, and Colorado from 2012 to 2021. The historical dishwasher usage frequency, the COVID-19 period usage change, and the potential seasonal trend in usage were investigated. Dishwasher cycle features such as cycle duration, quick cycle usage frequency, and average per cycle dishwasher energy consumption were observed and characterized. Due to the sample size, the lack of demographic data, and the limited geographic locations of the participating households, the results are not nationally representative. However, when compared with the usage frequency reported by RECS, the field-obtained average annual cycle counts per household are 164 in 2015 and 197 in 2020 for selected households which are consistent with the RECS annual cycle counts of 181 and 191 respectively in 2015 and 2020 for the same geographic locations. Our findings support the use of RECS data to approximate field dishwasher usage. The field data usage frequency for households with infrequent dishwasher use could supplement the RECS information to better characterize the national usage distribution of different cycle selections.