After searching at length for a watt meter, i.e. to determine how much power my appliances are using (and to prove that the power company is reporting bogus information), I discovered the Kill-a-Watt by Ahern. It costed about $35 and so far it appears to be functioning perfectly.
Yep, that's a nice instrument. I have had one for about a year, and use it quite often on equipment that I'm working on. Always works, no hassle, no setup, no calibration. Always ready to go in a few seconds. Good investment if you need to know those things.
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Tweetldee
Tweetldee at att dot net (Just subsitute the appropriate characters in the
address)
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Having one has turned out to be quite interesting. We've resolved our problem with our power company (they overcharged by a factor of 3), but using the meter to measure the power use of everyday appliances has shown that the ratings on the back of devices aren't always accurate.
For instance, a TV rated at 120 VAC and 1.5 amps should use up to 180 watts using the simple P=VA equation. However it only uses 85 W on average. Similarly our desktop computer is rated at 240 W but uses about 80 W even when the CPU is 100% occupied. Meanwhile the printer while it's on standby is a mere 4 watts.
A laptop computer meanwhile varies quite a lot: running the CPU at 100% with the screen on uses 55 W; with the screen saver on, 30 W, and with the screen on but CPU utilization reduced it uses only 23 W.
In article , snipped-for-privacy@mail.com mentioned...
That's really a rip-off. You should have that one written up in the newspaper and it should be a consumer piece on your local TV news. Let everyone else know that they may be getting overcharged, too.
That's the way it should be. The rating should be the absolute maximum and should never be exceeded, and the normal operating current should always be lower than the rating.
[snip]
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###Got a Question about ELECTRONICS? Check HERE First:###
http://users.pandora.be/educypedia/electronics/databank.htm
My email address is whitelisted. *All* email sent to it
goes directly to the trash unless you add NOSPAM in the
Subject: line with other stuff. alondra101 hotmail.com
Don't be ripped off by the big book dealers. Go to the URL
that will give you a choice and save you money(up to half).
http://www.everybookstore.com You'll be glad you did!
Just when you thought you had all this figured out, the gov't
changed it: http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html@@t@h@e@@a@f@f@l@u@e@n@t@@m@e@e@t@@t@h@e@@E@f@f@l@u@e@n@t@@
Please elaborate on the power company overcharge. How did it happen, did they correct the source of the error, and did they refund the amount you were overcharged.
I'm particulary curious about this, as documented events of this sort of vanishingly rare.
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