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.