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
-- Please remove one \'i\' from my address when replying by email.
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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