There can be leakage but not the type you're thinking of. Romex has
capacitance between the hot and ground wire and to a lesser extent, to
the neutral. It is insulated with a high dielectric loss (PVC)
insulation. Thus, some small amount of real power dissipation will be
consumed per foot heating the cable even when there is no load. If
the runs are long that could amount to a few watts.
Do you have a doorbell transformer? It probably dissipated 4 or 5
watts just sitting there.
Is your furnace/heat pump on the circuit? If so, there's a control
transformer that also will consume a few watts unloaded.
Finally, the is the question of near-zero-indication accuracy of the
meter. I see from the specs that the input spec is 30 amps.
Presumably the current transducer is rated for at least 30 amps and
probably 50. 14 watts would be 14/120 volts = 0.116 amps. That is
0.116/50 = 0.233 percent of full scale on the transducer. That's not
figuring in the tolerance of the voltage transducer. The CT is likely
to be a 1 or maybe 0.5% part. So that 14 watt reading could be
literally nothing.
One way to check is to open all the breakers. What does the wattmeter
say? Now close in the breakers, one at a time and see what happens.
If the reading develops when you close a breaker then you know that
it's real. Remember that an indication that low is way outside the
tolerance of the metering element so it might be 1 watt or 20 watts or
??? If it really is 14 watts then that's enough power dissipation
that you should be able to find something warm to the touch on that
circuit.
John
Recently installed a generator cutover switch
(
http://tinyurl.com/a6e9fgn) which tells me how much each circuit
is drawing.
I have one circuit which, when I *think* everything is unplugged,
still draws 18 watts.
First thing that comes to mind is that the circuit is serving
something that I do not know about; but I am hard-pressed to find
it.
That seems to leave "Leakage".
Is there any such thing as an electrical leak in home wiring?
If so, typical causes? Location strategies?
John DeArmond
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.fluxeon.com
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
See website for email address