If you’re considering installing a solar electric system (and even if you’re not), an important first step is to reduce your household electric usage. After all, why pay for the capacity of a costly solar electric panel, when it’s cheaper and easier to eliminate wasteful electricity usage?
To discover the energy hogs in your house, you’ll need the Kill O Watt Meter. This handy device measures the volts, current and watts used by your appliances and electronics.
Manufactured by P3 International, the Kill-O-Watt EZ Electric is sold on Amazon
You’re in for some major surprises:
For example, a 50-inch plasma flat panel TV sucks in almost 700 watts. That’s as much power as 2 refrigerators! The National Resources Defense Council found that the 50-inch plasma is estimated to use 679 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year. A 32-inch liquid-crystal display with HDTV capability was pegged at 387 kWh per year. By contrast, an older analog 34-inch TV was estimated to use just 209 kWh per year.
To use the Kill-A-Watt, just plug it into a wall socket and then insert the plug for the electronic device you’re monitoring. The meter has a money button, which computes usage over time and gives a total spent per time period.
Be sure to measure usage of electronics that appear to be “off”, but instead are in Phantom Power mode… silently consuming power. You can plug the phantom power menace into a power strip and turn the strip off.
I’ve just started using mine Kill O Watt and my shocking discovery was finding out that my microwave oven uses more power running the clock than heating my food (once per day)!
