P3P4400 Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor

Works great and it is very accurate.

This meter works as expected. I used it to test both standby usage of appliances and devices (TV's not turned on, laptop chargers not plugged in, etc.) and active appliance usage (electric kettle that draws about 12 amps, Microwave, plugged in computer/monitors). The build seems reasonable, but not sure if it will hold up to repeated plug-unplug cycles. So far it has not been an issue.

Don't bother buying the more expensive models of the Kill-A-Watt. The P3 model is more than enough. It will give you how many watts your device is drawing, as well as the number of amps, number of volts (at the outlet), and frequency (60 hertz). It also keeps track of the total number of kilowatts hours your device has used during the length of time you have been monitoring the device. To calculate how many kilowatt hours your device will use in a month, you just need a bit of simple math:(Watts/1000) x (number of hours device is turned on per day) x (31 days) = Kilowatt hours per monthExample for a 100 watt light bulb that is left on continuously for a month:(100/1000) x 24 x 31 = 74.4 kwh per monthNote that a kilowatt is 1000 watts and 1 kilowatt hour is the equivalent of ten 100 watt light bulbs burning for 1 hour.Electricity is billed in kilowatt hours so you can find out how much each kilowatt hour costs by contacting your electric company or looking on their website. Your electric bill should tell you how many kilowatt hours you used in a given month. It is easy to calculate how many tons of CO2 your electricity use produces. The EPA website estimates 6.8956 x 10-4 metric tons of CO2 per Kilowatt hour. I pay for 100% wind power through my utility, which only adds about $1.80 per month to my electric bill and we use a lot of electricity (about 1200 kwh per month). Part of this large number is the fact the landlord installed an electric water heater (a gas water heater would be much more efficient).I finally ordered a P3 Kill-A-Watt and wish I had ordered one 10 years ago because it would have paid for itself many times over. If you check various items in your home, you will be surprised at how much electricity things use. Many electrical devices draw 2 to 5 watts or more when they are turned off but left plugged in! When you count how many things you have plugged in in you home, this adds up. I now unplug things I am not using.One of the biggest energy wasters is the common light bulb, which wastes 98% of its energy as unwanted heat. For comparison, I have an old style Sony 32 inch TV (picture tube, not flat panel) that draws 150 watts. A single reading lamp with a common 150 watt bulb uses the same amount of electricity as this large TV. You are much better off using compact fluorescent bulbs which use FAR LESS electricity. Amazon sells GE compact florescent 100 watt (equivalent) bulbs that actually use only 26 watts. (Type "compact fluorescent 100 watt" into Amazon search). The compact florescent GE 60 watt (equivalent) bulbs actually use only 13 watts. These bulbs screw right into your existing lamps and light fixtures and will pay for themselves many times over. The downside of compact florescent bulbs is that they contain a significant amount of mercury (about 5 grams). There are special cleanup procedures you should follow if you accidentally break one inside--open a window, do NOT vacuum--see the EPA's "Cleaning Up a Broken CFL" article for the full procedure [...]Because compact florescent bulbs contain mercury, they must not be disposed of in regular trash. Call your local municipality to learn how to dispose of items that contain mercury--many municipalities have recycling programs for mercury containing items. A much better alternative to compact florescent bulbs are LED bulbs (do not contain mercury) which are a new technology and consequently expensive at the moment but prices will come down with time.A final note on the Kill-A-Watt regarding computer power supplies. I build computers and, prior to owning a Kill-A-Watt, ended up buying much larger (and more expensive) power supplies than I really needed because of some misleading information on the web. For example, the computer I am typing this on with a good Intel CPU and an expensive video card draws 130 watts at idle and 270 watts with both CPU and video card fully loaded (running Prime95 and 3DMark simultaneously). Unfortunately, I put a 750 watt power supply in this computer, which was totally unnecessary. It is important to purchase a high quality power supply, but you definitely don't need a 750 watt power supply for a computer that draws 270 watts at full load.

Love this little guy, combined with something else I will get to in a minute will quickly pay itself off in a matter of months. If I had any complaints it would be 2 things:1. when plugged in it blocks the other outlet on the plug so if you have limited outlets in a room it could be an issue2. the display can be hard to read, I often have to shine a light directly onto it, this is my main reason for giving it 4 starsit is also very dated looking, like it belongs in the early 90's from an aesthetic point of view.after a month or 2 of using this I have been able to test virtually every appliance I use (outside of the dryer and water heater, since they operate off of 230/240 volt), my toaster oven that is large enough to fit a Tombstone brand (or any other brand for that matter) frozen pizza uses around 1100 watts in the normal baking mode (with the convection fan running) and about 1400 with in toast mode (with the upper heating elements on) my 1000 watt microwave (Hamilton Beach brand from walmart) uses 1700 WATTS on high and this is where I learned something interesting, as you approach the upper threshold of what this meter is rated for (1800 watts) it begins to beep warning you to watch your power usage so you don't fry it, my wireless router and cable modem use about 12 watts and my 50" LED 4k TV uses around 110 watts, but if I enable the energy saving options that really just dim the back light I can get it down below 70 watts and my new HE LG washing machine uses less then 2 cents of electricity per load (0.1 something Kw) which frankly surprised me, your dryer is the power user there everybody (fyi, they several Kw per load to run a dryer). This has also allowed me to test the actual consumption of my LED light bulbs, the GE 10.5 and 11 watt (60 watt equivalent) bulbs actually use around 13 watts and the Utilitech (Lowes brand) 9 watt (60 watt equivalent) use exactly 9 watt and the 5.5 watt (40 watt equivalent) actually use 5.1-5.2 watts, also ALL incandescent bulbs I tested used MORE then listed wattage, 65 watt flood bulbs used 67 watts, 100 watt shop light used 106 watts and so on.I currently live alone and as such I am able to really track the whole house usage, my power company has a daily usage bar graph that I track in an excel spreadsheet to monitor usage. Currently I have turned off the central air and am using a propane powered wall mounted space heater for heat so I have a very steady power consumption of 8-9 Kw a day (with no dishwasher or dryer running days and a caveat I will get to in a minute) as monitored on the power company website of which I have established the older side by side fridge in the basement apartment (where I am staying) is using 2.6 Kw per day, the way I reached this average is to leave the killawatt connected for several days and divide total usage by number of hours plugged in, since fridges cycle on and off the longer you leave it hooked up the more accurate it gets, I find 1-2 days is enough to get a good number and the fridge in the vacant upstairs unit uses 1.3 Kw per day, so between the 2 fridges I have accounted for nearly half my power usage in a typical day. using my math skills I have estimated my daily person usage (tv, internet, laptop, cooking and lighting) to be around 2.5Kw so this leaves 1.5-2.5Kw un-accounted for that would have to be attributed to the hot water heater and the LED displays on kitchen appliances and the garage door opener backlight.Now for the big power hog, this house had a concrete sidewalk installed upstairs that VIOLATES building codes and causes a fairly major issue, the top of the sidewalk is about 2 inches below the top of the foundation wall (code minimum is 8" above grade for top of wall) and worse yet it was poured after construction and as a result doesn't have proper support underneath and so it has begun sagging and slopping toward the house which results in extremely high humidity in the basement room on the other side of that wall that requires running a dehumidifier most days of the week, now this is the big deal and a REAL EYE OPENER, that this little kill-a-watt showed me, when in operation the dehumidifier (despite being energy star rated) uses 400+ WATTS, if left running all day it can use upwards of 10Kw a day BY ITSELF, this is more then EVERYTHING else in the house combined (thanks to my energy saving methods) so seeing this I went out and bought a 10 dollar digital thermometer/humidistat so I can monitor the actual humidity level in the room and power the dehumidifier off and on as needed as the humidity setting on the unit is virtually useless, once it reaches the set humidity it just goes into a fan only mode that still uses like 200 Watts, so it's better to just shut it off, with this meter I can monitor how much power the dehumidifier uses a day and the humidistat shows me when I need to run it, so instead of DOUBLING my power bill by doing like my parents did when they where living here (they moved to Florida and I moved in to watch over the house while it's on the market) and leave it running 24/7 I was able to shave over a 100Kw off my monthly usage and thats not even accounting for the 6 days I didn't monitor usage and at about .11 cents per Kw (with all fees factored in) I've already saved the cost of the Humidistat/thermometer and in the next month or 2 will save the cost of this guy. I will soon be addressing the sidewalk issue by removing it and laying a paver walkway that still leaves room for proper drainage. As is even with 5 days of not using the dehumidifier at all and 6 days of not monitoring it the dehumidifer accounted for 20% of the overall power usage (likely much higher due to the missing days).If your power bills are high even when you don't have the A/C or heat going then get you one of these and find out what is costing you money. For me the biggest offender is the Dehumidifier followed by the side by side fridge (which is way to much for 1 person), my total power usage for November was 531 Kw, 112 Kw of that was the MONITORED usage of the dehumidifier and like 80 Kw was the fridge, so for black friday I bought myself a new smaller fridge that I will use and disconnect the bigger one, the new one should use 1/3 the power of the old one saving me about 6 bucks a month.