Oct 01 2008
Gadgets - How much does electric usage really cost?
I love gadgets! I love gadgets that really do what they advertise even more. The P3 P4400 Kill A Watt Electricity Monitor has high marks by users that wrote a review on Amazon.com.
Using electricity hits us all in the pocketbook. That said, I for one am not ready, willing or able to give mine up. I do wonder sometimes how much I spend on any given device and I found a gadget that could help.
The Kill A Watt Usage monitor tracks how many watts are used by an electronic device. You can figure the cost of electricity by first reading the numbers on the LCD display and multiplying it by the cost of a kilowatt hour. Your utility bill is also figured by kilowatt hour so you will be comparing apples to apples so to speak.
I was glad to read that this electric usage monitor can be plugged into a surge protector. That is the only way I would use it because most of my devices – including my TV and treadmill – are plugged into surge protectors.
One of the most interesting things I read in these reviews is that when figuring the usage of light bulbs you need to figure that there is additional wattage used by the lamp itself.
I’ve been thinking about buying one of those some day. I have gotten my electric bill down to about $18-25/month (except in the summer, when the fans and air conditioner push it up to about $30-40). To cut the bill, I do things like using fluorescent lights, a relatively small TV, and doing a lot of my work on a old laptop computer.