Buy Now And Save
Browse Amazon for Electricity Usage Monitors
One of the primary concerns of green interior design is to improve energy efficiency in a home. This is good for the environment because lowering energy consumption helps to reduce carbon emissions; and furthermore, better energy efficiency is good for the home owner because it means lower bills. One of the difficulties often encountered by people who seek to lower their electricity consumption is ignorance about what electrical appliances are costing the most money to run. The best way to dispel this ignorance is to buy a P3 International P4400 Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor.
You can buy a cheap Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor from most good home stores or online at reputable retail sites such as Amazon.com. The P4400 Electricity Usage Monitor is a small device that can fit in your hand and costs under $25. It consists of an LCD display, 5 buttons an in-plug and an out-plug. This device is a must have for all those people astonished by how high their electricity bills are every month. To use the P4400 Electricity Usage Monitor is simple. You plug a device that you want to test into the front plug socket of the monitor and then you plug the Electricity Usage Monitor into a wall socket. Finally, you input the utility rate into the monitor and it instantly calculates how much the electrical appliance costs you to run per day, per week, per month and per year. The read outs are given in Kilowatt-hours the same as your utility bills so you will have no problem understanding the information you gather.
As you go around your house trying out all the appliances switched both on and off you will soon begin to get a very clear idea about where you are spending your money. You will discover that big appliances such as washing machines, refridgerators and dishwashers use up a lot of electricity, especially if they are older, less efficient models. You will soon only be doing full loads in the clothes washer and you will be quickly motivated to take advantage of off-peak electricity. Secondly, you will begin to realize how much money you are wasting leaving appliances plugged in.
The US Department of Energy recently published data showing that the average home in America wastes 20% of its electricity on appliances that are turned off but are still plugged in and drawing electricity. Such appliances include TVs, DVD players, computers and game consoles that obstinately refuse to turn off and instead prefer to go into standby. Standby might seem convenient to you until you test with the Electricity Usage Monitor how much that convenience is costing you. Similarly, microwave ovens often have digital displays that continue to use electricity 24 hours a day. The average microwave actually costs more money when it is not being used to cook or heat food because of the power used by the display.
But don’t take my word for it: use an electricity usage monitor to find out for yourself.
Once you have done an audit of your home appliances and their electricity consumption turned both on and off you will be in a position to take action. Sometimes just unplugging is enough. Other times it makes good economic sense to buy a newer, more energy efficient model. For those people who are likely to forget to unplug before they go to bed there is the option to use an LCG5 Energy Saving Powerstrip that automatically overrides the standby function of the devices plugged into the strip when the master device is switched off. Thus when you turn off the master device (such as the TV or computer) all the other devices using that powerstrip will automatically turn off and stop costing you money.
Finally, the P3 International P4400 Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor also measures voltage and line frequency and is a good way to tell whether there is a brownout and your appliances are threatened. It is also handy for discovering whether a power socket is working and what the utility supply is like. Once you have discovered the truth regarding your electricity consumption in the home it is more than likely you will not only be grateful that you invested in buying a P3 International P4400 Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor, you will also find the sight of a microwave digital display and a standby light quite abhorrent.
Note: the P3 International P4400 Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor is only for AC-115 Volt Appliances and will not work with European or British power supplies.