There are two (2) separate costs to home electrical appliances.

1.    The purchase price
2.    The daily operating costs

Connect your appliances to the Kill A Watt P3 and find how efficient they really are. The appliance’s energy use is measured in kilowatt-hours, which is the measurement used by the utility company.

Appliances you can measure with the Kill A Watt P3 are:
•    Stereos and TVs
•    Room Air Conditioners and Fans
•    Toaster ovens, microwaves, and refrigerators
•    Computers and electronic games
•    Washing machines

With this information, you can determine:
•    Your appliances electrical cost by hour, day, week, month, or even a year
•    How efficient those appliances are
•    Which appliances are worth keeping
•    Which appliances need replacing

Here are the features of the Kill A Watt P3:
•    Enables cost forecasting
•    Accurate to within 0.2%
•    Cumulative killowatt-hour monitor
•    Displays Volts, Amps, Watts, Hz, VA, KWH, Power Factor
•    Operating voltage: 115 VAC
•    Max current: 15 A
•    Max power: 1875 VA
•    Dimensions: 5 1/8″ X 1 5/8″ X 2 3/8″

You can download the manual here.

Order your Kill A Watt P3 now.

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How to Gain Control of Your Home Energy Consumption

The buzzwords these days are green, renewable, sustainable, and carbon footprint. You care about all these, but sometimes your busy life keeps you from making changes. With work, kids, household upkeep, and bills, there just isn’t time to make huge changes.

Instead of thinking about all the pieces of the energy puzzle, it’s easier to think about one change at a time. But where do you start?

Start at home. Find out just how much energy your large home appliances are using. The greatest energy users in your home are heating/cooling systems, large kitchen appliances, and hot water. Get a handle on the big items will bring results faster.

Here’s something to help you find the energy hogs in your home.

The Kill A Watt Plug Meter is a good plug meter that measures watts and kWh. This handy devise allows you to see just how much electricity one appliance is using. It is an inexpensive way to start getting the big picture of how your home uses electricity.

Once you know where your greatest energy consumption is you can do something about it, one small step at a time.

In an earlier post, I shared about how to use a Kill-a-watt meter to determine home much energy your major home appliances are using. This handy electric meter told me my 1996, 18.2 cubit foot GE refrigerator cost me $137 per year to operate.

Newer, energy-efficient refrigerators cost only about $55 per year to operate. How do you know which refrigerators are energy efficient?

Look for the yellow and black Federal Trade Commission’s EnergyGuide label attached to the appliance you are interested in. This guide will tell you how much energy the appliance uses, compares energy use of similar products, and lists approximate annual operating costs.

Here’s how to read the EnergyGuide. Remember, fine print matters!

This EnergyGuide is for a 25 cubic foot LG Refrigerator-Freezer.

• The estimated yearly operating cost is $51, shown in large print mid-way down the left side of the guide.

• The simple line graph in the center indicates how this model compares to similar models. You can see that $51 dollars is the lowest and other models like this one can cost as much as $63 per year to operate.

• Below the graph in a small box is the estimated yearly electricity used by this model. In this case that is 476 kWh per year.

• Now the fine print! At the bottom of the guide the fine print says these figures are based on the 2007 national average electricity cost of 10.65 cents per kWh. I don’t know about you, but the cost per kWh is higher than that where I live.

• To find a more accurate estimate of the cost to run this refrigerator in your home, check your electric bill and find out what you pay per kWh. As an example, if you pay 12.6 cents per kWh to your electric provider, this LG refrigerator would cost you approximately $59.97 per year (476 kWh X .126 = 59.97)

• Notice the ENERGY STAR® logo in the bottom right corner. This logo assures that the appliance meets or exceeds the ENERGY STAR® level.

If this was helpful to you please leave a comment. Thanks!

Home Energy Efficiency and Major Appliances

Eventually, I want a net ZEH , a house that produces as much energy as it uses.

We are taking the small steps toward that end goal. Our initial goal is to reduce our energy consumption by 25%. For us that means reducing energy use to 38 kWh/day. Reliable sources, like my energy provider, declare our major household appliances huge contributors to our energy consumption.

Using our handy new Kill-A-Watt meter, we are now testing our major household appliances—the refrigerator, freezer, and hot water heater.

Today we have our refrigerator plugged into our Kill-A-Watt meter. The refrigerator is a GE 18.2 cubic foot, frost-free, refrigerator/freezer. It was here when we moved into this house ten years ago. I estimate it to be a 1996 model. I find no energy-star rating on it anywhere.

After twenty-four hours, I will check the reading and see how many kilowatt-hours my older GE refrigerator has used. Multiplying that number by 365 days in a year will give me an estimate of the refrigerator energy requirements over a year’s time. This information will help me decide if buying a new, energy efficient refrigerator would be a wise investment.

Perhaps leaving the refrigerator plugged into the Kill-A-Watt meter for a week or thirty days would give a truer estimate. Maybe I’ll do that another day.

But just now I am anxious to find out what I am paying for my stand-alone freezer which is 28 years old! That’s next!

I’ll let you know how this turns out.