Watt We Want vs. Watt We Need

Do you know how much a plugged-in power strip costs you when you aren't at home?

You know the one. It has six outlets and each one is plugged with AC adapters for the DVD/VCR player, television, surround sound speakers and receiver. You might also have the XBOX 360, or perhaps a wireless router or a cell phone charger plugged in to the strip. All of these electronics are great for an evening on the couch watching the latest movie on release.

A human being climbing a standard flight of stairs works at a rate of about 200 watts. That little power strip humming away dutifully uses roughly 45 watts. With each appliance on standby or at a normal operating state (the wireless router "on" without a computer being used), the household is charged the same amount for keeping a normal 40 watt incandescent light in the "on switch." We leave cell phone chargers plugged in, lights turned on in empty rooms, and fans running throughout the day.

Now, don't go dragging out the calculator and start trying to figure out all the wasted wattage throughout the house. Instead, check out the reasonably priced Kill-A-Watt: Electric Usage Monitor on Amazon.com. This handy monitor ($22.79) measures each and every watt between toaster oven, plug and outlet.

Tulsans may still be riding high from low bills after the ice storm. No power meant small payments, but now that the electric company is playing catch-up with increased rates, this small gadget may help get those bills back down like they were in December.

The Kill-A-Watt may seem intimidating at first, but we promise you don't need a bachelor's in electrical engineering to find a solution to your high electrical bills.

The monitor is made up of a plug, an outlet and five easy-to-use buttons with functions displayed on a basic LCD screen.

The instruction manual is easy to understand: "The LCD shows all meter readings: Volts, Current, Watts, Frequency, Power Factor and VA."

The most useful residential function is the "Watt" and "KWH," or Kilo Watt per hour button. The "Watt" button determines how much an appliance costs to keep plugged into a wall outlet.

To see your wasted power, simply plug the Kill-A-Watt into an outlet near the appliance in question, then plug the appliance into the Kill-A-Watt's three-prong outlet on the front of the monitor, and from there, choose which reading you want. Is it voltage? Is it amps?

To the Test

The monitor is a good way to convince even the staunchest anti-global warming believer into thinking that plugged in electronics and appliances aren't good for anyone, especially the person paying the bills.

So, it's time to put the lazy plugger-inner to the test.

A basic 1990s refrigerator with freezer draws 15 watts when plugged in and 282 watts when cooling the food within. When the Kill-A-Watt was left in the outlet for two hours to measure kilowatts/hour, the monitor measured .14. Meaning, to power the refrigerator for an entire day in Tulsa, Oklahoma it would cost 0.123648 dollars to keep this necessary appliance plugged in.

Yearly, a refrigerator costs around $45.00 to run everyday, hour, minute second in the current market fuel rate. Pretty cool, huh? Also, not too steep a price to keep food cool and safe to eat.

However, this somewhat low refrigerator cost shouldn't encourage blaring light bulb parties 24/7, or give Tulsans (who are charged a relatively low cost for electricity on a national scale) an excuse to waste electricity willy-nilly.

It is important to remember just how many refrigerators are costing $45/yearly in Tulsa. With an estimated 382,872 residents in 2006, just one refrigerator eating up power changes to a much larger number. Let's say, for the sake of a hypothetical situation, that 93 percent of residents own and operate refrigerators, equaling about 357,000 represented fridges.

And so PSO rakes in $16,065,000 a year. Just for refrigeration. Not to mention commercial refrigeration and walk in freezers at grocery stores and gas stations.

Let's throw a wrench in the machine here for a second. What about the environmental costs for all that refrigeration? Online research shows an estimated 1.5 pounds of CO2/KWH are released into the atmosphere. Newer, more efficient fridges would show a lower kilowatt/hour output, but again, not everyone has the good fortune of new kitchen appliances certified in the latest green technology.

So, for every hour those cooling units have plugs nestled into happy electrical outlets there are 1.05 lbs. of CO2 released hourly down at PSO for that $45/year refrigerator. As would be imagined, with 357,000 average refrigerators city wide, things get heavier daily, weekly, and yearly.

We knew it before, but electricity is expensive, for the pocket book and the air we breathe.

Kill a few watts and save a few bucks. Simple enough.