Which appli­ances are such energy hogs that they need to be replaced?  How much energy am I pay­ing for when plug in lamps and appli­ances are left on?  Now there is an easy way to fig­ure these things out.

Start­ing in July, 2011, all Howard County Library Sys­tem (HCLS) branches have “Kill A Watt” mon­i­tor­ing devices avail­able for loan.  These were gen­er­ously donated to HCLS by the Sierra Club, Howard County Group.  As of now, there are 12 devices avail­able for 3-week loan.  If you have an HCLS card you will be able to bor­row or reserve Kill A Watts just as you would other library materials.

The Kill A Watt is easy to use.  Basi­cally, you plug it into a stan­dard out­let and plug the elec­tric device into the Kill A Watt.  The Kill A Watt indi­cates elec­tric­ity usage in watts, kilowatt-hours, costs, and other mea­sures.   You can set it to record the energy use over a period of time.

Fight “Vam­pire Loads”

Many elec­tri­cal devices and appli­ances use energy even when you are not using them.  This is called a “vam­pire load.”  Any appli­ance that has a remote con­trol is actu­ally “on” even when it is “off.”  Gam­ing con­soles, espe­cially older mod­els, are noto­ri­ous vampires.

Have Fun

The Kill A Watt is inter­est­ing and fun to use.  It could make a great stu­dent sci­ence project (with adult super­vi­sion, of course) or class­room activity.

What Changes Can You Make After Using the Kill A Watt?

• Change your habits.  Does the cell phone charger always have to be plugged in, even when not charg­ing?  Sim­ple changes like these can add up to real differences.
• Use power strips so that you can eas­ily shut off all power to a “fam­ily” of appli­ances like a stereo system.
• Use “split” power strips.  These allow some elec­tron­ics to be kept on while allow­ing oth­ers to be turned on and off eas­ily.  For exam­ple, you need your DVR to record your favorite real­ity TV show or nature pro­gram, so that HAS to stay on, but you can save energy and money by turn­ing the TV and Play Sta­tion all the way off.
• Make sure your com­put­ers, print­ers, etc.  go to “sleep” mode when they are not used for a period of time.  You should prob­a­bly make this change any­way, but you can use the Kill A Watt to see how much you are sav­ing, or how much you would save by turn­ing it all the way off when not in use.
• Com­pare the elec­tric­ity use of a refrig­er­a­tor before and after clean­ing dust from its coils.
• Make smart pur­chases — use it to help you shop:

1. In the mar­ket for a new com­puter?  Fig­ure out what your pc and mon­i­tor use, then research how much less new ones or a lap­top would use. (Spoiler alert – lap­tops use a lot less.)
2. Think­ing about get­ting a new appli­ance?  Deter­mine how much energy yours uses, then com­pare that to new energy-efficient mod­els.   Find­ing out the energy used by your old refrig­er­a­tor could help jus­tify the pur­chase of a new, energy effi­cient one.   Here is a link to a refrig­er­a­tor energy cal­cu­la­tor.
3. Another great resource is www.energystar.gov.  This site can tell you the energy usage of many prod­ucts.