GT Product Review: Kill-A-Watt
(not actual size)
One of the features we’ve meant to start adding to the site was reviews of green products. Today’s product might not be as cool as an electric roadster, and probably wasn’t made with the ultra-green purity of an organic lip balm, but it is an essential tool for anyone looking at cutting a few bucks from their electric bill.
I got the Kill-A-Watt to diagnose and compare computer power supplies, but I’ve found it has helped me stay a lot greener than I thought. The Kill-A-Watt is a little beige box with a plug on the back and a socket on the front. Plug something in and it will tell you all about your Watts. What does that mean? Find out after the jump.
Yes, I will use a Ferris Bueller picture every article.
Wait, What’s a Watt?
A Watt is how we measure power; but before we talk about power, let’s talk about energry for a second.
We all know from science class that energy is the “stuff” that makes things go, but when we want a little detail we want a better picture of things. Basically energy (which we’ll measure in Joules… for now) is what comes packed inside a battery. You know, asside from all those chemicals and heavy metals. You know batteries, they come out of the charger all nice and warm and ready to serve but then they get used up. They’re out of energy because they’ve been providing power. Energy is how much it’s done over it’s life and power is the ammount it’s doing this second. In fact, a Watt is 1 Joule spent or earned in 1 second.
Now you too can smugly smile and raise an eyebrow when people misuse those terms. Just like a first-year physics major.
Now, a kilowatt is 1000 Watts and, a kilowatt-hour is all the kilowatts your friendly power company has sent you multiplied by all the hours they’ve been doing it. So the kilowatt-hours that show up on your bill are just a measure of your total energy usage. You can translate this into number of batteries if you like, but that’s extra credit.
Enough Sceince, Get on with the Gadget!
The Kill-A-Watt measures more than just power. It will show you the Voltage of your wires (call an electrician if it’s too far from 120v), the Current you’re drawing (this is the thing that actually changes and draws in energized electrons), but mainly you’re interested in the Wattage Power.
Tesla: More than cars and coils. (As played by Ziggy Stardust)
Even though 1 Volt x 1 Amp (the measure of current) is 1 Watt, it also gives you the power in either Watts or Volt-Amps. What’s the difference? Well it all has to do with the fact that we get our power from the Teslan miracle of Alternating Current. That is to say that the electric fields swing back and forth between 120V more than what the ground is producing, all the way down to -120V. This swinging means that the actual average voltage on your lines is 0, so some smart fellow decided to average it with some fancier statistics and came up with the Root Mean Square (RMS, though some Ivory Tower dwellers use the term Standard Deviation). The maximum Current and Voltage gives you VA, but if you use RMS, you get Watts.
That AC business leades to another interesting artifact that the K-A-W measures: Power Factor. I won’t get into what Power Factor actually is, but it is worth mentioning. Essentially, it’s a measure of how out of skew the timing of your electrons are from where they should be. This causes a loss of what’s called Reactive Power. And that’s what those tv scams sell a fix for. Lucky for you, unless you’re a factory you don’t get charged for Reactive Power. You can read more about PF Correction scams from Dan, and his Data.
There’s another cool little feature that I like a lot. Its button is even pink to set it apart from the industrial gray of the others. Remember those Killowatt-Hours we talked about earlier? This feature is all about that. Plug in your home theater, make sure everything is “off” and hit this button. Come back in a couple of hours and be amazed. This is the number that gets translated into a dollars… or tons of coal… or birds whacked by turbines… you get the picture.
This feature is like your carbon bathroom scale. It won’t actually lose weight for you, but it’s important to know where you’re at and it just might shock you into losing a few Joules.
I absolutely think you should get a Kill-A-Watt for yourself. They’re only $25 at Amazon. The plug on the back is really the only bad thing I can think of, but nothing a cheap (but UL rated) extension cord can’t fix.
This is a GreenerTrends Must Buy.
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Comments
Good is anything close to 0. Especially for things that are in standby. Remember that a common incandescent bulb is anything from 60W (a lamp) to 100W (to light a whole room) and those big lights are even more. Now multiply that by all the hours in a month it’s drawing power.
A kilowatt is about how much power goes into a microwave when it’s running, and you’ll see running LCD TVs under 200W. PCs vary with how much work they’re doing, but the average user will never ever see over 500W. My media PC has a Seasonic, which I went out of my way for because it has an efficiency of 85%. Which is really quite good. It’s also RoHS compliant, but that’s another article.
At any given moment, my house is using 1876W. It’s just a matter of finding the thing that I’m not using that’s pulling the most power. My power company charges about 10c per kWh, so it’s all about finding things that are on all the time or that use a whole lot for a short period (looking at you, dryer) and use those less or unplug them if I have to.
I have one of these, great little device. It will more than pay for itself in a few months if you use it to identify problem areas.
[...] This is a wonderful way to save a little on your utility bills (especially when combined with the Kill-A-Watt), and also makes you a little more eco-friendly! Just imagine going on a hiking or camping trip [...]
This looks like a great gadget to have. What are good and bad usage figures? Which power supply won out?