8 weeks of clean living

I received a new toy in the mail on Tuesday: P3 International’s Kill A Watt. It is essentially a one outlet electricity meter that allows you to monitor the power consumption of any appliance. I’m planning on using it to calculate the real cost of activities like cooking and watching TV, and to get a better idea of how my energy use breaks down into different categories. For starters, I measured how many kilowatt hours (kWh) it takes to charge my MacBook from about 20% charge. According to the Kill A Watt, the MacBook required only 0.08 kWh to reach a full charge, costing me approximately a penny. Nevertheless, according to my most recent SDGE bill, I’m using approximately 270 kWh per month. Certainly the majority of that energy is wrapped up in my refrigerator, dishwasher, washing machine and dryer, but it will be interesting to see the supporting role that TVs, rice cookers and electric toothbrushes play.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 5th, 2007 at 5:21 pm and is filed under Energy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.