circa 1980
I'm inspired to ask this from an episode of Oprah today. Supposedly one lady saved $200/month on her electric bill, simply by unplugging EVERYTHING not in use!
What are some things you do? At home? Grocery shopping? Saving on gas...etc?
Answer
I use a Kill-A-Watt meter to measure how much each electricity plugged-in device in my home uses. This meter measures watts of power used at a given moment, as well as kilowatt hours used over time. I found out that my coffee maker uses 2 watts constantly just because it's plugged in, my cable modem and router each use 15 watts constantly, my printer another 40 watts, and so on. All told I think I found around 300 watts worth of electricity that was being burned 24x7, which over the course of a month, assuming you're paying $0.10 per kilowatt hour (which was my rate at the time), adds up to $21.60 per month. I switched a plug-in carbon monoxide detector to a battery-powered one; lowered the brightness on a clock radio to its minimum setting; unplugged the DVD player and television, and only plug them in when in use (which in our house is only about twice a week for a couple of hours); and put the computer equipment on a second power bar, so I can have just the desktop computer on (one power bar), or just the router, modem, and printer on (other power bar) to access from my laptop, or both.
I also measured fridge and freezer power consumption with the Kill A Watt meter and then measured the temperature inside the fridge and freezer to make sure they weren't too cold. Turns out my kids had accidentally turned the fridge freezer setting down to about -20F, way too cold! So I adjusted that as well.
All told we were able to lower our electricity consumption by perhaps 4 kilowatt hours a day, to an extremely low 8-9 kwh, which is about a quarter to a fifth of what the average family uses in my area (province of Ontario Canada). We never paid anywhere near $200 a month for electricity, so we couldn't possibly save that much, but I would guess that someone paying over $200 in electricity could probably save three quarters of it by understanding where their energy is being used and by saving as much as possible.
I've tried to share some of my insights about saving energy with a little website I've developed, links to relevant articles provided below. Also a link to a site covering the kill-a-watt meter. Hope you find them useful.
I use a Kill-A-Watt meter to measure how much each electricity plugged-in device in my home uses. This meter measures watts of power used at a given moment, as well as kilowatt hours used over time. I found out that my coffee maker uses 2 watts constantly just because it's plugged in, my cable modem and router each use 15 watts constantly, my printer another 40 watts, and so on. All told I think I found around 300 watts worth of electricity that was being burned 24x7, which over the course of a month, assuming you're paying $0.10 per kilowatt hour (which was my rate at the time), adds up to $21.60 per month. I switched a plug-in carbon monoxide detector to a battery-powered one; lowered the brightness on a clock radio to its minimum setting; unplugged the DVD player and television, and only plug them in when in use (which in our house is only about twice a week for a couple of hours); and put the computer equipment on a second power bar, so I can have just the desktop computer on (one power bar), or just the router, modem, and printer on (other power bar) to access from my laptop, or both.
I also measured fridge and freezer power consumption with the Kill A Watt meter and then measured the temperature inside the fridge and freezer to make sure they weren't too cold. Turns out my kids had accidentally turned the fridge freezer setting down to about -20F, way too cold! So I adjusted that as well.
All told we were able to lower our electricity consumption by perhaps 4 kilowatt hours a day, to an extremely low 8-9 kwh, which is about a quarter to a fifth of what the average family uses in my area (province of Ontario Canada). We never paid anywhere near $200 a month for electricity, so we couldn't possibly save that much, but I would guess that someone paying over $200 in electricity could probably save three quarters of it by understanding where their energy is being used and by saving as much as possible.
I've tried to share some of my insights about saving energy with a little website I've developed, links to relevant articles provided below. Also a link to a site covering the kill-a-watt meter. Hope you find them useful.
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