P3 International P4400 Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor
by P3 INTERNATIONAL
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List Price: Our Price: $14.99 You Save: $15.00 (50%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: Tools See more product details |
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Tools and Hardware Reviews of P3 International P4400 Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor
Customer Review: Great Fun for Obessive Compulsive People
Summary: 5 Stars
If you are a "Miser," this device will be your best friend. I bought the "Kill-A-Watt" because I suspected that our old Fridge was shooting up the electric bill. I plugged the Fridge into the meter and left it for 3 days. I was very surprised to find out the the fridge was only burning about 1.5 KWH (Kilowatt Hours) per day, which is about what it should.
Now I am going around the house and plugging other appliances in for a couple days. The real shocker was that my "economical" eMachines PC along with a CRT monitor was using more energy than the fridge! The computer was burning almost 2 KWH per day. I made changes to the energy saver software in Windows, so that the monitor automatically shuts off in 10 minutes and the computer hibernates in 1 hour. This has brought the daily consumption down to 1 KWH.
For those of you who don't understand KWH, its a measurement of electric usage by the power company. To be simple, using a KWH is about .08¢ in our area. So, if you save 1 KWH per day, you save .08¢ After a month's time, it's about $2.48. After a year it's about $30 bucks. The savings add up over time.
With the Kill-A-Watt, I've found out lots of interesting things:
My Mac Mini with a LCD monitor uses about 1/2 the power of my eMachines Tower with CRT. That's 70 Watts vs. 140 Watts.
My Electric Blanket which I though was "economical" pulls 120 Watts during operation. It actually uses 1 KWH per day. I even found out that the blanket burns 10 Watts when the power switch is off!
I found many "power bandits" in my home. These are devices like cellphones, scanners, routers, modems that have those little black power blocks. Most of these devices use 5 to 10 watts with the power switch off. With the Kill-A-Watt, I was able to find the biggest offenders and plug them into a timer that shuts off each night when they are not in use.
If you are truly obsessive about your electrical bill like me, you can make a nice Excel spreadsheet with all your appliances. You can enter Watts, Kilowatt Hours, Price per hour and than figure if replacing a device would pay for the purchase and how long it will take.
As everyone says in their reviews, "This device will pay for it's self."
Customer Review: Geek out and save $!!! A few tips to get maximum value...
Summary: 5 Stars
If you've read the other reviews you know by now that this measures power consumption so you know how much it costs to keep lights on, etc. How much does it really cost me to leave my computer on 24/7?
A fine tip Sharpie and some masking tape can dramatically increase the effectiveness of the information you get. I find you quickly forget what things cost to leave on...
1) Write your local electricity cost directly on the Kill-A-Watt (or on tape). This is because each time you unplug it to move it around, it forgets.
2) Write the power consumption and cost on your devices. I use a piece of masking tape on the underside of things. Also useful to know power consumption at various settings (for example, a fan)
3) It's more useful to think of how much it costs each month if you leave something on 24/7 than to think of a "per hour" cost. We pay 10.5 cents per KWH so a 100 watt light costs $7.56 a month / 25 cents a day or 1.05 cents per hour doesn't have the same impact.
4) If there are lights that get left on frequently, write the consumption / cost on a sticky note next to the switch (based on the light you have there)
5) If you want to get really geeked out, test your CFL's separately. It might say 23 watts on it, but I've found them to actually vary quite a bit. Some used as little as 18 watts (Maybe they were very old?) to as much as 26.
6) For really low consumption devices (cell phone chargers on standby for example) it isn't really accurate. If you insist on getting a reading, you will have to leave it in for 24 hours and have it log the total since they tend to be below the accurate instant display limit. Also note that power consumption changes under load - a stand mixer or blender for example.
Finally I'd say that this is something every library should have - since it's not something you necessarily need at hand all the time. After a few days of measuring everything in your house it's likely to sit on your shelf for months and months at a time.
One pet peeve is that the display is hard to read. Would a backlight be too much to ask?
If you have a question or found this review helpful, please let me know!
Customer Review: Kill A Watt meter, the good and the bad
Summary: 5 Stars
I made my own electricity usage monitoring system a few years ago and have used it many times to determine my usage.
I have most of the significant findings recorded in a notebook, things like how much energy my CD players use, both when playing music and when "off." How much energy my desktop computer uses, on, off, when my monitor is on, off, when the system is idle, etc.
I really have figured it all out at this point, but my system is more of a hassle to use than the P3 Kill-a-Watt, and that's the reason I'm buying it. My system is made from a multimeter and an extension cord, one wire of which branches off to a couple of banana plugs, which plug into the multimeter. I multiply my current flow by the voltage (120) to get watts used.
Of course, I've saved a lot of money by determining energy usage around my house. Measuring it takes out the guesswork. For the most part, I only have things draw energy when there's a good reason, for instance the wall warts on my cordless phones and my answering machine are on 24/7. I switch off many of my wall warts with toggled power strips, however. Those things add up. I use a power strip to totally turn off power to my computer, reducing usage to zero. My gas + electricity for my entire 1900+ foot house averages under $60/month!
Caveats:
1. If my experience is any guide, don't leave something plugged into this for an extended period of time. I had my computer system plugged into a power strip which was plugged into this for quite a while, probably around 6-8 months. Suddenly, the unit had no readings. It passed power but refused to do anything else. The instructions say to discontinue power in that event, but this was no help. I thought it was dead. Then after a few days it came back to life. I think the moral is to use it, but then put it aside, don't leave power running through it indefinitely. The warranty is only something like 6 months!
2. At low wattages my Kill A Watt doesn't provide useful information. Wall warts using ~3 watts show as zero. For those I have to use my homemade system described above, which is a very accurate system but more cumbersome to use than the Kill A Watt meter.
Customer Review: I had fun measuring nearly every pluggable electrical device in the house.
Summary: 5 Stars
In standard style, Amazon shows how much we save on the purchase price. For the Kill-a-Watt meter, that is only the beginning. Since there should be some benefit derived from consuming electricity, this meter is great at identifying those hidden electric power wasters. Note: This is not an energy saving device. It is a portable meter that identifies areas to reduce hidden electrical energy consumption and save money.
Keep in mind that return on investment (ROI) should drive what to install or replace to reduce consumption of electricity. The question to ask is: What is the expected payback time from reduced electricity consumption to recover the cost of this energy-saving investment? The shorter the time, the better. For me, less than a year is desired. I don't want to wait twenty years to break even.
I had fun measuring nearly every pluggable electrical device in the house. I am impressed with the simplicity of using the Kill-a-Watt meter.
The Kill-a-Watt meter fits in the palm of my hand. There is a three-prong plug on the back and a three-prong socket on the front. The unit turns on when plugged in and displays the AC line voltage. Although the functions for each button are described in the product features, only two buttons are important in finding hidden electric power wasters. Pressing the second button displays AC line current to two decimal places. Pressing the third button displays power in watts.
When it comes to saving on the cost of electricity, go after the biggies first: Installing a set-back thermostat, quality weather stripping, thermal-insulating entrance doors, and ceiling fans. Replace old poor energy performance units with higher SEER versions. Install timers to take advantage of time-of-day usage.
Then, find those hidden electric power wasters. That is where the Kill-a-Watt meter helps a lot. I found about 2.3 kWh wasted per day. At ten cents per kWh, that works out to approximately $84 annually. Some of the solutions had an instant ROI: unplug. Some will require an ROI evaluation of possible solutions.
Customer Review: You can't conserve if you don't know what you're using
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a very simple and handy device. It tells you kWh and time of use, plus other useful numbers such as current (A), power (W), line frequency (Hz), and AC voltage (V AC).
It doesn't log data for later output and it doesn't tell you $$ on the display. That's up to you. But if you can multiply, you don't have to work hard. I plugged my fridge into this sucker and it's been tracking usage for a week or so. I left a notepad and pen on the counter, and when I'm getting something from the fridge I write down the hours and kWh number so I can make myself a chart. I want to see what it's power consumption looks like during night and day so I can track off-peak consumption and its contribution to our electric bill. I've got an older side-by-side fridge in the basement that we use for frozen stuff and beverages, and I can't wait to see if that thing is a pig or not. Other items I'd like to monitor:
- our desktop PC, which is on most of the time
- Lamps with incandescant bulbs vs. CFLs
- the cable box
- the microwave when it is running
If you aren't into Excel or spreadsheet programs, just plug in an appliance and leave it there for 24 hours and make yourself a list with 3 columns: appliance, kWh, $. To find your electricity price, read your electric bill. Multiply kWh by your price and you can see how much each appliance costs you in a day. Check out the Energy Information Agency (EIA.gov). Google "Electricity Retail Price Fact Sheet EIA" and you'll find a map that displays average state electricity price in each state if you don't feel like deciphering your electric bill.
I wish the unit could store info after it was unplugged, but it would cost quite a bit more than $20 if it had these features.
I bought 3 of these - one for myself and two for work, and we're handing them out to employees to play with so they can see what consumes electricity. One is monitoring this computer. After 108 hrs, it has consumed 3.65 kWh, which is about 25 cents at our rates ($0.07/kWh).