Find out 'watts up' in your home

More and more we're hearing it... find phantom loads in your house, find out the electricity usage of your appliances and such... why? To use less energy, of course and to use what we do have smartly. We're hearing buzz words like "green" and words that actually hold meaning like Energy Star which is all fine and dandy if you're buying something new but what about what you already own?

Enter the P3 International Kill A Watt device.

The device itself is bigger than I had imagined about the length of a double socket outlet cover, not quite as wide and about an inch deep. The device is a nondescript beige designed to blend into any surrounding and features a three pronged plug on the back and a three pronged socket in the front. There's a read out above five buttons that displays volts, amps, watts, hertz, kilowatt hours (kWh), time in use, even power frequency. The five buttons are labeled so you know what numbers you're looking at though the display also tells you as well. They're prominent and easy to push to switch to various displays.

Using it is very easy. Plug the P3 International Kill A Watt into an outlet, plug in the appliance you'd like to measure and simply walk away. After however long you'd like to test for (the device starts the timer to count up the time as soon as you plug it in) read out your usage. It's really that easy. I've tested a variety of appliances like our refrigerator, which tested 1.32 kWh after 24 hours and our old cell phone which took .01 kWh after 11 hours & 23 minutes of charging. What really surprised me is when we got new phones, I tested them while charging and noticed that they took .02 with a 12 hour charge. I had heard about 'phantom loads' which are devices that pull out energy even when not in use, so I plugged just the charger into the P3 International Kill A Watt without the cell phone and found that after 39 hours it had drawn .05 kWh! I now unplug my chargers when not in use. Sure, seems like nothing, until you add it up and it becomes something.

The P3 International Kill A Watt is designed to be used with AC 115-volt appliances and is very easy to use. The one main drawback is that if you plug this into, say, a refrigerator that's in a cabinet or by a darkened wall it's VERY difficult to read the display without a flashlight. It would be nice if they could design something that did the job but had a display on an extension that could be read from around things like refrigerators. It's a small annoyance though and does not diminish the job that this little mighty energy box does - it's lightweight, unobtrusive and performs a great task.

It's easy to complain about high electric bills, it's frustrating to try out things and not see them show up on said bills, month after month and wonder what we're doing wrong, in an effort to save our budgets AND our planet. The P3 International Kill A Watt can help aid you and is well worth the time, effort and expense (ours was nearly $30 including shipping). Wonder about that fancy big screen TV? Want to encourage your teenager to not use their hair dryer quite so long? Seeing is believing when you use the P3 International Kill A Watt.