Until we get those new fangled touchscreens, and hopefully other devices someday, that can be powered from our own human generated electrical energy, purchased electricity remains a necessity. Our best bet at reducing costs, economical and environmental, is reducing consumption.
As the saying goes, knowledge is power, and that’s quite literally true here. We obviously know devices in our homes require electricity, and some devices even come with ratings stickers that estimate power efficiency or annual kWh used. But it’s difficult to know just how much electricity every single device is using in real life. But if we have that knowledge, we can save energy, save power.
Standby energy consumption is also a problem. “The U.S Department of Energy reports that 20% of our electric bills come from items that are left plugged in when they are not in use, or items that are in standby mode.” All that wasted electricity has many very descriptive names. My favourite two for this leaking electricity are phantom load and vampire power. Just sucks out that energy, and while I’m clearly not up on my vampire lore, I gather a vampire at least benefits from drinking blood. But we’re not so lucky, losing out be it from both blood sucking and electricity sucking.
I don’t quite know how this post has turned into paralleling vampires and wasted electricity, but sometimes that just the way a train of thought goes. A mind of its own with its own track, or spur line… So I’m going with it, going with the flow…of thought and electricity. So, I accept that today’s writing is turning into a bit of tongue in cheek, or is it fang in neck?
How do you stop a vampire? Garlic, and isn’t there something about things made of silver too? Well, watts up with stopping vampire power? Just that, watts, or was it batts, well bats, but you get the idea. But really watching your watts is a great way to save them. And that’s where the P3 International P4400 Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor comes in.
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Also available at ThinkGeek.com, this device “allows you to connect your appliances and assess how efficient they are. A large LCD display counts consumption by the Kilowatt-hour, just like your utility company. You can figure out your electrical expenses by the hour, day, week, month, even an entire year. Monitor the quality of your power by displaying… Volts, Amps, Watts, Hz, VA, KWH, [and] Power Factor…[and] enables cost forecasting…[and is] accurate to within 0.2%.”
Amazon.com adds further information on their site, including how it can even “test if an outlet is working, or evaluate the quality of the electrical power provided by your utility company. It can detect voltage drops around the house, help to predict brownout conditions.”
So maybe there we have the silver bullet to kill vampire power and any other extraneous use of electricity. Better the enemy known than the enemy unknown, right? If we know how much it takes to run our different devices and appliances, we can make choices that fit our larger choice, reducing energy costs, using energy consciously not unconsciously. I’d never suggest going cold turkey, or cold blood if we’re serving those vampires, for electricity in an integral part of the functioning of our society. Part of our lifeblood if you will. So let’s not stab ourselves in the heart; there are better ways to conserve energy.
Kill A Watt is available from a number of different sellers, but currently the cheapest I’ve found it, is at Amazon.com and it can also be shipped outside the U.S. Yay!
