Reducing energy consumption begins by knowing how much energy you consume in the first place.

Having acquired our electric power monitor, a Kill-A-Watt meter, we are learning where the high-energy consumers are in our home. First, we plugged our refrigerator into the monitor. The results were posted Tuesday, the 16th.

Next, we checked the energy use of our stand-alone freezer. Here are the results.

Over a 24-hour period, our freezer used 3.29 kilowatt-hours of energy.

That means I am paying $144 per year to keep my bulk and bargain shopping trip finds preserved until ready to use. Maybe that’s a good deal. Maybe it isn’t. Since the freezer is 28 years old, I am guessing it isn’t.

I’ll be checking new energy star rated freezers soon and compare.

Have you ever wondered if you should replace that old refrigerator for a more energy efficient model? Now you can find out which of your home appliances are worth keeping and which should be replaced.

We bought this handy gadget, an electricity usage monitor, which monitors the electric consumption of appliances in your home. There are several electric consumption monitors on the market.

We bought our Kill-A-Watt meter at Amazon.com. This nifty little meter is easy to use.Plug the meter into the electrical socket and then plug the appliance into the monitor. It measures your appliances energy consumption in kilowatt-hours. The Kill-A-Watt EZ even calculates operating costs.

To get a feel for how the meter works, we first tried it out with a floor lamp we use often. With the lamp plugged into the meter, we turned the lamp on for one hour. After an hour, we went to have a look. The meter recorded how long the lamp had been using electricity as well as how many kilowatt-hours it used during that time.

Our lamp used 0.29 kWh in one hour. It cost $0.03 per hour to use the lamp.

Next, we will find out if my old GE refrigerator is an energy hog.

Here are the technical details for the Kill-A-Watt EZ

• Shows the operating costs of your household appliances
• Accurate within 0.2%
• Calculates cost and forecasts by week, month and year
• Displays eight critical units of measure on the large LCD display
• Built-in battery backup

Try the Kill-A-Watt EZ meter for yourself!