Measure Energy Usage with Kill a Watt or Killawatt Energy Meter
Posted by Norman Fong
The Kill a watt or Killawatt is a low cost (sub $20) Electricity Usage Monitor that allows you to measure the actual power usage of your electrical items. This this tool, you will save money on all your power bills.
You can then determine what items are wasting energy and need to be replaced or turned off.
We were able to find out that a hot water pot drew tons of power. We now unplug it at night or when we are out.
We consolidated multiple hard drives into a higher capacity WD Green hard drive, switched to a 80PLUS certified power supply to reduce the power draw on a desktop computer.
Our Sony LCD HDTV was Energy Star Certified and supposed to draw 0.3 watts on standby, but really consumed far more. Do not trust the spec sheets. Measure it for yourself.
We put power ‘bricks’ on common power strips and turn them off when not needed. The Kill a Watt showed how much phantom power these bricks drew so we now turn off the power strip at night.
We own the very nice Sonos music system that streams music wirelessly all over the home. It has no “OFF” button. The manual states: “the system uses minimal electricity when it is not playing music”. We measured a 7 watt power consumption for the Sonos S5 unit during standby. That is not exactly minimal especially when you multiply it times several units in each house. We put this unit on a digital timer so it would not be on 24/7.
See our Ways to Save Energy, Money on your Energy Bill for more tips.
Filed under: Conservation, Easy, Effort, Electronics, Energy, Green, Home, Reduce, Shopping | Tags: enery use meter, killawat, LCD HDTV, Sonos
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8 Responses to “Measure Energy Usage with Kill a Watt or Killawatt Energy Meter”
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December 26th, 2008 at 5:28 am
[...] covered power use by technology products in the past, including use of a Killawatt to measure power consumption. [...]
May 5th, 2010 at 10:37 am
[...] can you save energy without knowing you have reduced usage? The Killawatt is a low cost energy meter that can show you how much energy your appliances use. For serious [...]
August 13th, 2010 at 10:06 am
[...] Electronics should draw as little power as possible especially when in standby mode. Do not assume that your product is completely optimized to save energy. Follow our techniques to save power using special power strips and power measuring tools. [...]
August 27th, 2010 at 11:15 am
[...] $35. It also works great for TVs. Green Powerstrips have finally started to appear. You can Measure Energy Usage with a Kill a Watt Energy meter to quantify the power use and [...]
September 15th, 2010 at 10:54 am
[...] less watts of power when calibrated. This translates to $13 or more a year power savings. Use a Killawatt to measure before and after power use. People have save $30 to $60 a year with picture [...]
November 3rd, 2010 at 12:02 am
[...] in boiling a cup of water. The unit does use energy even in vacuum mode, 0.05 amps according to my Killawatt, so unplug it from the wall to maximize your energy savings. [...]
March 7th, 2011 at 12:01 am
[...] can you save energy without knowing you have reduced usage? The Kill a watt or Killawatt is a low cost energy meter that can show you how much energy your appliances use. For [...]
June 8th, 2011 at 2:02 pm
[...] have covered the Kill a watt in the past. The Energy Detective is a more powerful unit that can display energy use in a whole [...]