More Power Consumption

As I mentioned in my last post, I've been playing with a Kill-A-Watt. It measures watts and can average kwh over time to give you a way to compare costs for various devices in actual use.

Some new info:
(Just for comparison purposes, typical incandescent light bulbs range from 60 watts to 100 watts.)

1994 21" TV: 0 watts standby, about 90 watts when on.

2001 4 head, stereo Hi-Fi VCR: 2 - 6 watts in standby, 90 watts when on. It uses 6 watts when first plugged in to update its clock, then drops down to 2 watts. If left plugged in all year, this would cost about $0.87 per year (at this month's electricity price of $0.05 per kwh).

Portable DVD player: 1 watt in standby mode, 11 watts when on.

I know some people that were concerned about these: the hairdryer, toaster, and toaster oven (none have clocks) use 0 watts when off.

I mentioned replacing halogen with fluorescent torchieres in a previous post. Here's some more information on why it's a money saving idea:
Halogen Torchiere: 250 watts when on and it's very hot!!
Fluorescent Torchiere: 65 watts when on, not so hot, and only 24 watts when dimmed.
With both at full blast, the fluorescent is not only cooler by a longshot, it's using almost one quarter of the energy. Another way to look at it is that you can use the halogen for four hours before you reach the one kwh mark, but over 15 hours using the fluorescent.

More to come...