Fuelly Forums - Real time power meter

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brock

This has probably already been mentioned here but the watts-up or kill a watt are also both great meters that just plug in to the wall and then you plug any item in to them to see exactly how much power they consume.

The Kill-a-Watt is an especially good deal for testing 110v appliances "one at a time" (or rather, one per Kill-a-Watt you own). Somewhere around the house I have a Kill-a-Watt I was using to check individual appliances. I think I originally spent something like $60 for it, and it worked well. However, I can't seem to find the thing right now, and it would be a handy supplement to TED (with TED monitoring the whole house, and Kill-a-Watt letting me easily zero in on a single plug in appliance).

So I figured it was probably time to check about getting another Kill-a-Watt. And when I did a quick google search for them, I discovered that they have come down a lot in price. I saw some places selling them for as little is $22.50! However, my google search also showed that Amazon.com is currently selling new Kill-a-Watt meters for only $29.99 with FREE SHIPPING! While that is slightly more than the cheapest price I could get, the "free shipping" goes a long way towards closing the price gap. And one thing I like about Amazon, is that they are generally very good about shipping you what you ordered (whereas some company I've never heard about is more of a "crap shoot"). So considering the minimal cost difference (when the free shipping was factored in), I decided to order my replacement Kill-a-Watt from Amazon.

I figure that even though I now have TED monitoring "the big picture" for me (which is "a good thing"), the Kill-a-Watt is still a nice device to monitor/test "the small picture" (individual appliances, or maybe even multiple related gadgets hooked up to a common power strip). For example, Kill-a-Watt is very good at getting the true monthly cost of running a fridge, so you can make informed decisions as to if it is "worth it" to replace the fridge with a more "energy efficient" model. And it's amazing how many "small gadgets" don't give useful power usage info on them, but with Kill-a-Watt you just plug them in and read out how much power they really use (both when on, and when off).

Hmmm... If I had thought about it (before purchasing the Kill-a-Watt), I would have remembered that Amazon.com has an "affiliate" program, which doesn't cost the person buying the stuff anything more (but does give a little "kick back" to the "affiliate"). I don't suppose GasSavers.org is an Amazon "affiliate" by any chance? If so, what's the affiliate link? It would be real cool IMHO, if everytime I (or other GasSavers.org users) purchased stuff from Amazon, that purchase also made a small contribution to GasSavers...