Power Consumption and Phantoms

I previously showed how to deal with Phantom Power Loads, but only the basics on how to find them. This week, I bought a Kill-A-Watt . This device can measure the power being consumed by your device both when it runs actively and when in standby mode, which can let you compute how much money this wastes.

First, some basics. The electric company charges based on kilowatt-hours of electricity consumed. Take the wattage of the device and multiply the hours it's used, and you have the watt-hours. Divide by 1000 and the result is the kilowatt-hours the device uses. Stand-by devices run all day, every day, 365 days a year. That adds up to ~8,760 hours (assuming the power doesn't go out...like that never happens). A typical 60 watt bulb running all year would be about 525 kwh (kilowatt-hours). At $0.05 per kilowatt-hour, which was the cost on my last utility bill, that would run over $26.00 per year. That's not huge, but lets do a quick replacement. A 15 watt compact flourescent bulb in the same socket would be about $6.50. Even at $10 for the bulb, you'd save money on it. These bulbs are a lot cheaper these days, and as I mentioned in a previous post, Wal-Mart is trying to make them cost even less.

The Kill-A-Watt results so far:
My microwave, which is only a couple of years old, uses 1 watt to run the clock. This costs about $0.44 per year.

My 13 inch TV/VCR that was built in 2000 uses 3w or 12w in standby mode. I have no idea why it chooses to go to 12w most of the time. It uses between 55w and 75w when it's on. Its stand-by mode at 12w costs about $5.26 per year.

We bought the refrigerator in 1995, I believe. I mentioned how to keep the refrigerator in tip-top condition energy-wise in a previous post. It uses 2w when it's not running, and 170w to 180w when running. The Kill-A-Watt measures its usage over time to help get a better idea of what it really costs since I don't want to sit there watching it. Over 33 and a half hours, it used 3.71 kwh. This works out to 970 kwh and $48.50 per year. A comparable modern refrigerator should run about half (or less) of that.

My nearly brand new chest freezer uses 0 w when not running and about 75w when running. The Kill-A-Watt shows this to cost about $14 per year. This, I'm sure, is much better than the old upright freezer we used to have.

I'll be measuring more information, I'm sure.