Here is a very handy little device that might tell you more than you want to know about your household electronics.
The Kill-a-Watt is sold online here at Amazon. Here is a video review by a very helpful guy who walks you through everything there is to know about the Kill-a-Watt.
And here is a great review of the Kill-a-Watt by Greener Trends:
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. A Watt is how we measure power; but before we talk about power, let’s talk about energy 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, aside 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. 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 leads 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 $23 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. via Green Product Review: Kill-A-Watt | Greener Trends.
