I hear numerous popularized science writings about energy being saved as, for example, "X households worth of electricity..." etc.

How much energy do people mean by one "household?" Is there some sort of rule-of-thumb that people use as some sort of standard rate to compute these stats, like 5kWh/day or something like that?

That's an excellent question, I imagine it'd vary quite alot from place to place too.

But I've got a feeling that if 5kWh/day is the norm, I've far exceeded that on a regular basis...

Even accounting for the average of day/night cycles? At nite I hardly use any electricity. Maybe it could be something like 50 kWh/day.

well, we're talking units of energy per day. It shouldn't matter if those units are consumed in the day or night, it's still a rate of consumption per 24-hr day.

The average for 24hrs should be less than the 12-hr daytime average, if you don't have an electric heater in northern climates. Still that's a big assumption to make - I still don't know the value.

My understanding is that the number, as bandied about in pop sci and the media, used to be 1 kw - which is of course an instantaneous rate of power, so it was meant to describe a normalized-from-peak usage rate that could be multiplied by time to get kw-hrs of energy. But this is not a good way of looking at things for people who need to deal with real world peak demands, especially those looking to get their alternate technologies into the mix.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/basics/energybasics101.html

states USA 2004 average monthly electricity usage of
908 kilowatthour

908 / (24*30) = 1.26 kw average normalized instantaneous power consumption "per household"

In recent years I have heard the number 2 kw per household used with increasing frequency, and I have heard first hand reports on message boards of an affluent home consuming as much as 5 kw or even more on this basis.

When you consider the number of poor households holding down that average, and then account for peak loading, you can see how the number could easily go up to 10 kw depending on what you're talking about.

Thanks.