Kill-A-Watt
My electric bills are killing me, and now I can finally figure out exactly why.
The Kill-A-Watt plugs into a wall outlet and will measure the actual electricity usage of any appliance. I've been wanting one of these things for years, to the point of seriously considering manufacturing one myself. I'm glad someone has finally done it for me. It looks like my computer costs me something like $216 a year to run. Trouble is, I have five of them. Something's gotta go.
Street price for this device is about $30. I should save that much in the first month.
An additional idea that I thought of would be combining these units with that cheesy home-network technology that communicates via your home's electrical system. (Or use WiFi) That way several wall units could communicate with a PC and give you a running total of your energy consumption. The system could automatically retrieve your electrical rates from the Internet and even give you a running total in dollars of what you're spending.
-- Curt Nelson
Kill-A-Watt
$22
Available from Amazon
Manufactured by P3 International
Favorite (15)
Carlos Pagnos
Hey, there is a cool tool I need but I don't know if it exists...
Everybody has a volt meter and a current meter.
The Kill-a-watt is an excellent way to integrate the power and get energy over time for AC current.
Where's the same thing for DC?
Is there a portable tool that measures volts and current, multiplies them together and sums it over time?
This would be real cool for many purposes, studying the energy used or created by appliances, parts of appliances, or renewable energy equipment.
When I ask engineers how they do this they cringe and say "we a couple instruments and a PC and Labview", knowing full well that using a computer for a simple measurement is a travesty.