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Kill-a-Watt Energy Monitor |
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Written by Martin Regtien
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Nov 11, 2005 at 12:00 AM |
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How to Monitor and Kill Expensive Electrons
This is a device that I started designing in my mind’s eye decades ago.
I wanted to be able to see how much electricity the various devices consumed in my home.
And over the years I kept wondering why nobody brought out a product like that.
Enter P-3 International with their aptly named Kill-a-Watt P4400 monitor for electric usage.
It was all I wanted in a device and using it led to a few surprise discoveries. |
Plug and Play or Plug and Pay?
My home needs at least twice as many power points as it currently has.
With the proliferation of gadgets and appliances I find myself constantly plugging and unplugging devices.
Maybe that's not a bad thing as some electronic appliances keep on draining power even when they are not in use.
And at the end of the month that constant flow of electrons has to be paid for.
Which devices drain the most power? And how much power is used in a standby mode?
Or worse, how much power is needed to start up a device?
All that information the Kill-a-Watt will provide.
Let's see how it does that.
Taking the Pulse of Power
The P4400 Kill-a-Watt monitor that we tested, courtesy of X-Peer, was the European version, being for 240 V and having the rounded prongs.
In Australia we indeed need that 240V but all our plugs have the slanted prongs…
which made for a bit of adaptation on either side of the device (see picture).
The Kill-a-Watt has a large LCD screen with 5 buttons which can call up 8 functions.
These are: Volt, Amp (Current), Watt, Hz (frequency), KWH, VA, PF (Power Factor) and Hour.
The most important one of the lot is the Watt indicator as that’s most likely you’d want to know.
But don’t underestimate the use of the Volt button. That keeps a check on the ever-fluctuating Voltage coming into your home.
Be surprised at how much it varies over short periods of time: in my case Voltage dipped as low as 225V from the maximum of 240V.
Can’t be good for sensitive electronic gear. That’s why a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) is such a good idea for your desktop as it stabilises the power to your machine in addition to supplying a battery backup.
Some eye-opening examples
I won’t bore you with a lot of facts and figures about this device, which you can easily get from their web site anyway, but show you with a few examples how the Kill-a-Watt performed for me.
I have an old DiamondTron NF 19 inch monitor, which is just too heavy to cart out and dispose off. Besides, it still works perfectly.
But how much juice does it consume?
It runs at around 80 watts by the surprising thing is that it takes about three times that amount to start up! In standby mode it uses less than one watt.
Next, I checked out my fridge. That’s another candidate for replacement.
I noticed that this fridge was consuming power even though the motor wasn’t running.
Would it be just the standby mode that was responsible for this? Or was the light on all the time? Well, when you open the door it certainly was! But when I closed the door very slowly I noticed that it stayed on. Nothing was pushing the switch in.
It has been on for probably a few good years before the Kill-a-Watt made the discovery!
Conclusion
It’s fun to play with the Kill-a-Watt, particularly if you want to reduce your electricity bill.
Most gadgets that we review here cost money to run. This one will help you save money.
Check out the standby mode of your various stereo and TV components.
Switching off your entertainment centre might save you over 400 kW per year!
Or install one of these Smart Strips that switch off all your components at the same time when you switch off your monitor or TV.
It’s time we stop spending money on electricity use that we can do without.
Highly recommended and for under $35 bucks one of the better investments you can make!
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Last Updated ( Apr 22, 2007 at 06:16 PM )
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