Kill-a-watt help please

[Gardenarian]

Hi - I am borrowing a Kill-a-watt from our library today. Does anyone have suggestions on the best way to use the device? I'm going to try it on our refrigerator first; the fridge came with the house so it's at least 7 years old.

Have you used a Kill-a-watt?
What were your experiences?

I'm looking forward to playing with this gadget!

[loosechickens]

when you plug it in to test your refrigerator, be sure to leave it plugged in for at least 24 hours, as the fridge cycles off and on and that will give you a good idea of use for a given 24 hour period.

For other types of appliances, only necessary to use while you're operating them, such as a microwave, to get an idea of how much power then draw during use. But, also check power use when the appliance is not running, to check for "phantom loads", which is the power the appliance uses when you're not running it, just to keep things like the clock, etc. running.

[kib]

Most of our media electronics plugs into a surge protector. I was very curious about how much phantom load the whole shebang uses if I forget to turn off the surge protector, so I plugged the device in between it and the wall (as opposed to checking each device separately). Ditto for the office stuff.

[Rogar]

Loosechickens comments pretty much argee with mine. I made a simple spreadrsheet for the major power pulls and calculated typical use per day, or week or whatever and then could figure costs for any unit of time. I suppose there is some general interest in everything in the house, but I mostly only checked things that I had special interest in or could control a little. I was especially interested in the refigerator, and also checked my home office when active and also phantom loads, TV and home entertainment, etc. I didn't check things like the washer and dryer or the furnace motor.

[Gardenarian]

Okay, I plugged the fridge in for 24 hours, and it read 2.2. Does that mean my fridge is using 803 kwh per year? That seems awfully high!
My husband's going to try it on his computers today - he has a huge set up - and will try pluggling in the power strip to the Kill-a-watt. He never turns off his machines, so it will be really interesting to see what comes up!

[Rogar]

That sounds like it could well be, but high. By any chance might you have been opening and closing the door an unusual amount, or have you brushed the coils recently. I sort of forgot how mine worked, so I look it up. I think if you press the KWH button twice, you can verify the number of hours you were monitoring, just as a double check. Here is an example from the instructions:


To determine the costs of running a piece of equipment, you need to extrapolate how much energy the equipment uses over the period you want to evaluate, based on the time you monitored the equipment.
So if you monitored the equipment for 1 day and you want to know how much it costs to run it for one year, multiply the kWh from the monitor times 365. Then multiply this number of kWhs times $.12 (the
average cost of electricity in Vermont is $.12/kWh).


For example, a 14-year-old ENERGY STAR-rated, 21 cu. ft. refrigerator was monitored for 2 days and recorded 3.28kWh usage. To find out how much it costs to run the refrigerator for 1 year: 365 days / 2 days = 182.5
182.5 X 3.28 kWh (kWh used over the monitoring period) = 599kWh/yr 599 kWh X $.12 (average cost of electricity per kWh) = $71.88/yr.


Here are some instructions, which I think are better than the ones that came with mine. They say you should leave the monitor on for a few days when you are doing a frig.


http://www.thetfordvermont.us/docs/minutes/TECMinutes/killawatt%20instructions%2007307.pdf


If you are still in doubt, you might want to try again and maybe leave it on for a couple of days.

[loosechickens]

except for a/c, your refrigerator is probably one of the biggest energy users in your home, so that's certainly possible...... and I've read that if people have tower computers (desktop ones) and leave them on all the time, they can account for 10% of home energy use, so results may be eyeopening.

[Rogar]

except for a/c, your refrigerator is probably one of the biggest energy users in your home, so that's certainly possible...... and I've read that if people have tower computers (desktop ones) and leave them on all the time, they can account for 10% of home energy use, so results may be eyeopening.

When I did my audit, my desktop computer and monitor actually used a decent amount of energy even in sleep or standby mode. I try to turn it off during the day and toggle the whole home office off at night or days when I don't use them.

It made me think of my old office days when most everyone in the building would leave their computers on overnight so they wouldn't have to wait for them to power up in the mornings.

[Never Again]

Okay, I plugged the fridge in for 24 hours, and it read 2.2. Does that mean my fridge is using 803 kwh per year? That seems awfully high!
My husband's going to try it on his computers today - he has a huge set up - and will try pluggling in the power strip to the Kill-a-watt. He never turns off his machines, so it will be really interesting to see what comes up!

In my experience doing energy audit work for housing authorities, that is not too high. I have data from some 10 to 20 year old refrigerators. Most were about the same usage as yours but a few were 50% to 75% higher. A lot depends on the age and the model.

[jp1]

When I did my audit, my desktop computer and monitor actually used a decent amount of energy even in sleep or standby mode. I try to turn it off during the day and toggle the whole home office off at night or days when I don't use them.

It made me think of my old office days when most everyone in the building would leave their computers on overnight so they wouldn't have to wait for them to power up in the mornings.

My desktop actually doesn't use any energy in sleep mode. I was kind of surprised by that, but now I don't have to worry that I'm wasting energy just because I don't want to wait for it to boot up everytime I want to go online to look something up or dash off a quick email.

[Zoebird]

NZ is funny, though. We actually aren't officially, accurately metered. You set your power use by an estimate of how much you will use. Since I had no idea, I initially put us in the "middle" section of energy use, which means we pay $50 per month and then they quarterly check the meters, then divide it over the months. If we have overpaid, then we get a credit; if we have underpaid, then they invoice us with a higher bill. Weird, huh?

So, we discovered over our first year here that our "high use" energy times met the "middle" standard -- but the rest of the year we were "using shockingly little power" according to the power company. So, what this means is that we pay the middle standard plus the extra in the spring (after the winter ends), and then we are often credited once we hit the summer because we hardly used any power over the remaining 9 months. Then we pay again starting in the fall. It's actually quite confusing.

So, this year (our second year in this place) the power company suggested we pay the lower amount throughout the year, as not have the crediting process coming off the winter.

We really only use a little bit of light (mostly candlelight at night -- or a dim 15 watt bulb if we don't want to use the candles). Our hot water and cooking are gas (which is very inexpensive). And we only use three major appliances: 1. fridge; 2. washer; 3. dryer. In summer, i try to line dry as much as possible -- but it's a damp place and we don't have the clothes to wait 5-9 days for something to air-dry. So, I use it. we also charge our computers at home (and at the office), turning it off in between charging times.

Thankfully, the offices moved from this weird quarterly estimates to actual metering. This happened back in January, and what a godsend. You see, we are part of a floor, and the power company estimated our use. At $450 per month. Of course, there was a fair bit of excessive power use -- people leaving lights, lamps, and small heaters and fans on overnight, really cranking the a/c or heating (depending upon the season), and basically wasting energy left and right in a myriad of ways.

So, we came in and began to institute practices where things were turned off, areas that were unused would nto be heated (we have 4 zones in our offices that are handled by different a/c thermostats, but we really only need to utilize two zones on most days, and in most months (november through april), we didn't really need to use the a/c at all (we would open the windows in the morning for fresh air, or use it to move some air later in the day, but that's about it). Every outlet has it's own switch, so we keep most of them switched off, and of course, each person leaves the room as they found it -- with various things switched off as well when they leave.

Now, our power bill at work is $80 per month. We have such a huge credit with them -- based on the last three month's metering plus the bond we put into place last year (when we started the contract with them) -- that we actually don't have to pay our power bill month-to-month.

My favorite thing is the switches at each outlet. It's so easy to just turn everything off down to the outlet whenever you turn something off or unplug it. It's the best.

So, business down to $80 per month (or less), and our home bill down to $40 per month.