Has anyone bought/used one of these? They seem to be a neat device to analyze home device power usage, such as a new refrigerator will take 20 years to pay back the purchase price, regardless of the wife wanting a new one. :-) Any experience out there?
WT
I have a Kill A Watt which is a more basic but still very capable instrument, it's only about 20 bucks and provides 90% the functionality that one does. Neat device, first couple weeks I had it I was plugging in everything I could find. The cumulative kWhr feature has been among the most useful.
On Tue, 1 Apr 2008 12:36:43 -0500, "Wayne Tiffany" put finger to keyboard and composed:
Here's a much cheaper alternative, with less features:
- Franc Zabkar
Be careful of interpreting the results obtained for some appliances. Depending on the algorithm used to calculate the power usage, some switchmode power supplies that use a burst standby mode, can cause the meter to give a misleadingly high reading when the device being measured, is in standby. Otherwise, from all I've read about them (in general rather than any specific make / model) they seem to be a useful and reasonably accurate tool for the price.
Arfa
I have a Kill-a-Watt, which seems to give useful information.
Whether any of these devices will save you money by directing you to high-current-drain devices you weren't aware of seems unlikely. But they're cheap and fun to have.
Mine actually surprised me in how little power some things I thought were big users actually consumed.
On the other hand, the space heater my tenant was using was quite the opposite, getting rid of that and installing a proper thermostatically controlled baseboard in that room really did save money.
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