Power Meter
I bought this power meter after I moved into a freestanding house and wanted to know why my electricity bill seemed so high. After read a review on Dans data http://www.dansdata.com/quickshot041.htm and it seemed to be exactly what I wanted so I went ahead and got it from AusPC Market.
I went around and measured nearly every thing that I could. Here is a list of devices in my house and their power draw as well as some comments about reducing the power usage:
Fridge ,90 watts when running. 6 watts on standby.
Sony DVD player, 7 watts while playing a DVD. 0 Watts on standby. It's obviously drawing some current, it's just so small that it is not measurable when on standby. Thats what is happening anytime I mention 0 watts bellow.
25 MJ portable gas heater, 40 when burning and 6 watts on standby. The heater has a timer that I use every day in winter. The heater forgets the time and timer settings if I turn it off and so needs to be reprogrammed if it loses power. Because of this, I am happy to leave it on and pay the 2c of electricity a day that it uses.
Gas continuous flow hot water heater, 8 watts on standby and 50 watts when running.
Pioneer receiver, 28 watts when watching a DVD at reasonable volume. In theory it should use more the louder it gets but I couldn't see any change as I turned it up. 0 watts on standby.
Sharp TV 78cm tube, 80 watts running and 12 watts on standby. Considering the receiver uses almost nothing on standby it is a bit disappointing that the TV uses 12. The next TV I get will hopefully be one that adheres to the 1 watt initiative.
Active sub-woofer. 22 watts when playing at a reasonable volume and, incredibly, 18 watts on standby. This sub even has auto detection mode that is mean to “turn it on” when it detects a signal. I have unplugged it and I plug it back in when I want to use it. This thing was wasting some $22 a year.
ADSL wireless Internet router. 8 watts. I leave my router running 24hrs a day and I don't intend to change that. It's just too useful and convenient to be able to access the Internet at a moments notice.
NAS network attached storage. 10 watts spun up. The NAS doesn't get used that much so I turned it off. I'll turn it on when I need to use it.
Electric Blanket. This one was interesting. It basically uses 72 watts when operating. The dial has numbers 1 to 10. When set on ten, the blanket uses 72 watts all the time. When set on one it uses 72watts for a fraction of a second and then uses nothing for a few seconds. The other numbers alter the proportion of on to off time.
Sony alarm clock. 0 watts.
Savings
The power meter has helped me identify 2 devices that I will be turning off and only back on when I use them. This will save about 30 watts, which doesn't sound like much but it will save about $36 a year. I will also save me money in the future because I'm much more interested in how much power things like my next TV will use in standby mode. The payback period for the power meter is about a year and a half in my case.