NS Power has a dandy little calculator that covers nearly all the bases. You’ll have to think a bit about your energy use, but that’s probably a good thing, right? How many hours a day do you typically have how many lights turned on? Do you leave computers and printers and other electronics on standby?

How much of a phantom load are you paying for? And how are you going to determine what’s using the energy that you shouldn’t be paying for?

Kill-A-Watt meter — lets you see how much energy any plug-in appliance, electronic device or thingy uses. Great for identifying your phantom loads.

I have two Kill-a-Watt meters, they plug into the wall socket and then you plug your electrical device into them. The meters show what the draw is, and you can see how much electricity things like a fridge or a freezer use over a 24 hour period in kWh or $$ (or both). I’ve also used them throughout the house to determine what our always-on devices give us for phantom loads. But some things (water heaters and baseboards) for example, you can’t plug in. I’ve been very interested in monitoring systems for a long time, but haven’t been able to justify one for my household.

That just changed.

I’ve signed up to be a beta tester for a monitoring system by Blueline Innovations (St Johns, NL) that uses a sensor on our meter to send energy use information to our wireless devices. We’ll see if we can reduce our energy usage through behavioural changes! Will report on our success or failure after the 90 day testing period.

If you’re interested in participating in the beta testing program too, email: beta@bluelineinnovations.com

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