Kill-A-Watt Rocks

I also bought a Kill A Watt and was surprised at what I found. Our old TV doesn't draw much but our Comcast/Motorola DVR HD cable box does even when off. It should have been obvious how much the cable box drew because of the amount of heat it generate.

We're starting a new home soon and based on my energy research going with all energy star appliances and solar domestic water heat. The cost for the solar should pay back in just under 2 years. The solar will also help power a small recirculation pump that will cut down on water useage because we don't have to wait for hot water to come out.

A little bit of mindfulness and research can go a long way in saving $ and resources.

 

If you really want to get into measuring get a WattsUp Pro.

It logs the use over time and you can download the graph to your PC. You can watch your compressor kick on and off on the fridge. You see how much power is used in run, sleep, and off. It's a great device.

For energy saving tips see my house web site - The Westbrook House

 

I got one a while back, since it fit my gadget budget. I was tired of power glitches requiring me to reset the clock on my otherwise-acceptably-designed HDTV, and wanted to buy an APC UPS to keep it running 24/7. It turned out to draw around 240W max, and 35W when off due to a 24/7 fan it requires. The ~300W UPS has kept it going uninterrupted for many months now.

I checked a few appliances but wasn't in the mood to change anything just to save a few pennies here and there. Maybe later...

 

How can you say a hair dryer does not use much power. A typical hair dryer consumes 1500-1800 watts! True it may not be used for long periods of time (unless you have a teenage daughter with long hair), and you generally don't leave it on when it is not being used. But, it probably has the highest draw rate of anything in your house -- more than your fridge, computer, tv or anything else.

 

I recently bought one too. So far, has resulted in me taking two rarely used computers off line unless needed, turning off computer monitors when not in use, lecturing the kids on light bulbs, spending about $200 on compact flourescent bulbs, setting the wine cellar to 57 instead of 55, discovering and disconnecting a satellite player that was plugged in but not being used, putting the basement and bedroom entertainment centers on power strips, and taking the suggestions here for getting a couple of small solar panels (20watt ones) and feeding a battery off of those (I use it to run all battery chargers, like cell phone and roomba).

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(David @ Apr 10 2006, 08:35 AM) [snapback]237505[/snapback]</div>

we have the recirc pump at work but unless you insulate the pipes it's a waste. As all your doing is turning them into inefficient radiators, inside walls and basements etc. Pipe wrap on all hot pipes everywhere in the house from the water heater on out/up.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(priusblue @ Apr 10 2006, 07:01 PM) [snapback]237771[/snapback]</div>

I bought a small kit, see page 2 of this thread where daryllDD were talking about this type of setup...

http://priuschat.com/index.php?showtopic=17088&st=20

Not hard to do, I have mine propped up outside my office window facing SSW, put the battery in a waterproof box outside the window...

I use an inverter for most things, but is inefficient, though not sure how much power I am using going through the inverter.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(bigdaddy @ Apr 26 2006, 05:14 PM) [snapback]245813[/snapback]</div>

Hey great. I'm glad you got that going.

As far as I'm concerned every house should have 12V DC outlets all over the place - or at a minimum in the "office." room. All battery chargers would then be nominal 12V, and would not need to converte DC to AC, and remain "on" all the time. The 12V outlets could be easily fed by a small PV panel and/or a battery... OR it could very simply be fed by a single converter from the AC mains. It is amazingly stupid that in today's modern office there are countless individual converters for every peripheral and battery charger. I don't think I could count all mine if I tried.

Color printer
Laser printer
desk phone
cell phone
flashlight
DSL modem
router
scanner
laptop external hard drive

That's just in two seconds off the top of my head. Each one of these things has its own wasteful converter! Ug.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(priusblue @ Apr 10 2006, 10:56 PM) [snapback]237488[/snapback]</div>

You mentioned that your TV only draws 2 watts when off. Sounds like a really small amount of energy until you think about it running 24/7. That's 48 watts a day, and about 1440 watts monthly. 1.4 kw/hr a month is something to think about. My point is that if you look at these mini consumers in isolation from one another, you miss the cumulative effect. When we did a power survey in our house, using a kilowatt meter, we found 200 watts of "hidden" power consumption, mostly in remotes, unneeded clocks, computers on standby, etc. How many clocks does a house need? Our microwave has one, the stove has one and there is (was) a clock on the wall. We put the microwave on a power strip and turned off the clock........

Check out this statistic:
1. We found 200 watts/hr of hidden energy consumption. Probably typical; let's assume it is.
2. That comes to 4800 watts a day, wasted energy.
3. There are 12 houses on our block. Multiply our house by 12 and you get 57,600 watts a day, wasted.
4. Now, there are about 70 million households in the US. Multiply our daily wastage of 4800 watts by 70 million households and you get a staggeringly large number, something like 3360 x 10 8th hours of totally wasted energy.
5. If we actually saved that energy, we could eliminate 30 full scale power plants with NO reduction in our lifestyles....

Dick Cheney thinks this is a fine "personal virtue", but not part of what he calls a sound energy policy. I think he's full of s***.

 

I just replaced twenty-four 65 watt bulbs, two 60 watt bulbs, and two 45 watt bulbs with fluorescent bulbs. Doing some quick math, and assuming on average 5 hours of use each day, I've gone from 8.65 kwh to 3.04 kwh just for lights per day. Not bad. Over a year that's over 2000 kwh saved!

Combine that with my new washer and dryer, which are advertised as the most energy efficient full size machines, and my bills should be getting much lower.

All other appliances are already Energy Star, so not much more to change for the big users.

I've thought about shutting off all the little things (PC's, AV gear) but it's too much of a hassle. Those will have to keep drawing their power.

Our roof already has a radiant barrier, too.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(DocVijay @ May 4 2006, 04:13 PM) [snapback]249873[/snapback]</div>

I see you live in Tampa (I'm in Bradenton) and you will be saving even more because of the reduced load you A/C will have to deal with from the relatively large amounts of heat radiated from the incandescent bulbs. That's one of the reasons I have them throughout my house.

FYI here in West Central Florida we pay about 10.5 cents/kwh. Not too long ago it was usually 8 cents but fuel surcharges have come into play.

Rick
2006 #4

 

Yup! It is a cool device. I just got one recently from http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=...74&loc=111&sp=1 ($18.99, much cheaper than most places but they're out of stock again)

Here are some of my findings:
Dell 2001FP: 37 W
Dell 2005FPW: 39-40 W
Sony GDM-500PS 21" CRT monitor:
- 2 W in standby
- 93 W when in WinXP at desktop w/default background
- ~115 W when displaying an all white screen
Athlon 64 3200+ machine w/Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe mobo and Antec 450W Smartpower PSU, Cool n Quiet enabled, 2 hard drives and 2 video cards:
- 8 W w/power "off"
- 101 W at idle
- 130 W when running distributed.net client & World Community Grid Agent; still need to run a graphics benchmark;
1.25 ghz Mac Mini:
- 1 W w/power "off",
- ~14 W at idle
- ~31 W when running distributed.net client
Infocus X1 projector:
- ~200 W on
- ~20 W when "off' and fan is at high speed for 1 minute after shutdown
- ~18 W (!) when "off" [fan running at low speed]
Power Mac G5 2 ghz dual proc at work w/a 17" ADC display attached and both CPUs maxed w/distributed.net client: ~390 W! [unhooking the ADC powered display makes the usage go down ~40 W]
RCA DVR80 DirecTivo w/2nd hard drive and extra fan: 45-47 W
cheapy Memorex 13" CRT TV bought in end of 2004:
- 3 W "off"
- 29-33 W typical usage
- 44 W w/an all white screen