Reddit Reddit reviews P3 P4400 Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor

We found 455 Reddit comments about P3 P4400 Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

P3 P4400 Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor
Choose from the Kill-a-Watt's four settings to monitor your electrical usageMonitor your electrical usage by day, week, month, or yearFeatures easy-to-read screenElectricity usage monitor connects to appliances and assesses efficiencyLarge LCD display counts consumption by the kilowatt-hourCalculates electricity expenses by the day, week, month, or yearDisplays volts, amps, and wattage within 0.2 - 2.0percent accuracyCompatible with inverters; designed for use with AC 115-volt appliances
Check price on Amazon

455 Reddit comments about P3 P4400 Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor:

u/NarwhalShibboleth · 328 pointsr/buildapc

Well, since you asked nicely:

For UPSs, there are two main things to look for: the UPS design type and the wattage rating.

---

For UPS design types, there are 3 main categories.

  • A "standby" UPS switches from wall power to battery power when it senses a drop in voltage using a mechanical switch.
  • A "line-interactive" UPS augments that mechanical switch with a transformer for under/over voltage correction, and adds some more intelligent circuitry. These are often tagged with "AVR" for "automatic voltage regulator"
  • An "online" UPS actually runs the load on battery at all times, isolating your equipment from the wall power as much as possible.

    A line-interactive UPS is good for most gaming PCs, since standby units can be really hit-or-miss. The voltage regulation alone can save a lot of wear and tear on your hardware. If you have the cash to shell out, an online UPS is even better but for most people is just a luxury.

    ---

    For wattage rating, you need to at minimum match the actual power draw of your computer when at full load. The best method is to use a power meter like the Kill-A-Watt, but not everyone has access to one.

    To conservatively estimate this without a power meter, take the TDP or wattage rating of all your components and multiply it by 1.3 to account for varying (in)efficiencies of PSUs. If you don't know your components' TDP, you can get a tally by putting all your parts into PCPartPicker and checking the power symbol on the top right. If you really don't want to do all that work and just want an easy, safe choice, then multiply your PSU's wattage rating by 1.25.

    Don't forget to also and separately include your monitor, modem, router, printer, and any other peripherals that you want to plug into the UPS! Having your router and modem on a UPS is a nice perk, since you'll likely still be able to have Internet access for your portable devices during a power outage.

    ---

    For general UPS vendor recommendation: The CyberPower AVR (CPxxxxAVR) series and the Tripp-Lite Smart LCD Tower (SMARTxxxxLCDT) series are great line-interactive units for most home use. The Tripp-Lite OmniSmart, CyberPower PFC, and APC Back-Ups Pro lines are a bit of a step up.

    Be SURE that you are looking at the wattage rating and not the volt-amp (VA) rating of your prospective UPS. The UPS's wattage rating is generally 60% of its VA rating. Most UPS units are marketed by their VA ratings, so be careful.

    When you install the UPS, a large portion of the benefit is that your computer can automatically shut down when it is low on battery. This saves you from those harmful forced power-offs when the power is cut while you're away. Be sure to plug in that USB connection! Almost all UPSs from the major vendors come with this connection for your computer. I wouldn't bother with a unit that doesn't. Windows 10 seems to recognize most UPS units natively, but you may need to install software/drivers if it doesn't.

    ---

    Edit: clarified line interactive units, USB plugging, etc.
u/LNMagic · 49 pointsr/funny

There are plenty of other factors to consider in your overall energy bill - namely, insulation. If you get good radiant barrier installed in your attic (the kind with Styrofoam, not just the silver spray), you're likely to reduce your energy bill. If you want to really see how much an appliance uses, buy a Kill-A-Watt.

u/erh · 44 pointsr/personalfinance

Get a electricity usage monitor, such as a "Kill a Watt" and actually measure it. That should help you figure out what's using up your power.

u/SurfaceDockGuy · 41 pointsr/Surface

>> Editor's note, November 27th, 10:30AM ET: When we originally tested the Surface Book 2, we noticed extreme power drain issues. Microsoft replaced the power supply, and we haven't experienced the same issues with the replacement part. This review and score have been updated to reflect this.

...

>> Despite the power supply replacement, I was still able to get the Surface Book 2 to drain battery even when connected to the wall. This was only under extreme heavy load, and most games can’t push the Surface Book 2 to start discharging. I don’t think this will be an issue for most people, but it’s something to be aware of in case you’re going to use this as your main PC hooked up to monitors and really putting pressure on the CPU and GPU.

-----
Crucial missing information:

  • How many amps were drawn from the wall socket on either power supply?
  • How many amps did the power supply deliver to the tablet? (Too difficult to measure since you need a custom wiring harness)
  • How hot did each power supply get under load?

    A $16 kill-a-watt and a $3 drugstore thermometer might help get some answers.
u/Bballwolf · 37 pointsr/BuyItForLife

You can buy a device off Amazon called a kill-a-watt meter and it will tell you exactly how much electricity it actually uses.

P3 P4400 Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_o9IMBbZ7ZG5WK

If you're interested. If not then just sit back and enjoy your fantastic fridge!

u/Theghost129 · 33 pointsr/buildapcsales

Invest in a watt meter, gentlemen

u/KeijiKiryira · 29 pointsr/mildlyinteresting

I've seen so much photoshopped pictures for shit to buy on amazon. It's all terrible and hilarious.

Such as this.
Like, why? Why is it so hard to ACTUALLY take pictures of it?

u/utopianfiat · 28 pointsr/LifeProTips

Pre-frozen (i.e.: flash frozen and kept frozen continuously) veggies and fruits are also many times more nutritious than canned- and nearly as nutritious as fresh (but fresh always tastes best and gives you the best dietary fiber)

Also, if you stock up on frozen food and fill your freezer, it will be more energy efficient. This is because your freezer is constantly leaking small amounts of air in and out (which is the main reason why it has to keep cooling your food). This principle also applies to fridges, but food will rot in the fridge so you have to be more careful (though you can pack it full of empty milk bottles filled with water, especially if you have a water filter you prefer to drink cold water from).

For all you thermodynamics nerds out there, q(energy from leakage)= ∆T • Cp(specific heat capacity of your food) • m(mass of your food). You're getting the same amount of leakage, but if you increase mass, it decreases the average ∆T.

EDIT: Holy crap I botched that formula. Fixed now though.

Also it bears mentioning that the Cp of air is about 1, Cp of ice is about 2, and the Cp of water is 4.184-ish at most relevant temperatures.

EDIT2: If anyone wants to experimentally verify me, this works great for measuring energy usage and is relatively cheap.

u/djak250 · 25 pointsr/pcmasterrace

P3 P4400 Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_NAGdBbPXZ6TG8

Grab one of those and prove it to him. If it's worth 20 bucks to show you're not the issue.

u/Arcoril · 22 pointsr/geek

The USB spec limits power output to 500mA, but proprietary adapters like the iPhone one will pump out 1A upon request. Many new transformers pull surprisingly little power when they're idle too. I tested both my iPhone and iPad adapters using a Kill A Watt meter and the draw was so low that they didn't even register. Hopefully the transformer in the wall jack is similarly efficient.

u/princess-smartypants · 22 pointsr/cordcutters

You can check your devices with a kill-a-watt meter. My public library loans them.

u/primalj · 19 pointsr/Frugal

An electronic usage meter.

You'll find out pretty quickly how many of your appliances are leeching electricity even when turned off.

u/thatotherguy321 · 16 pointsr/HomeImprovement

first, you should be aware of everything that is using power. Turn off or unplug everything you know of. Go see if the meter is still running. If it's still running, that's your mysterious drain, figure out what it is.

To find out what single item is a energy hog, hookup a kill-a-watt and take note of the readings around your house.

Some cities or utility companies offer free energy audits. See if you qualify.

edit: also check on your bill what plan you are on compared to your previous. It is not necessarily a fixed amount per kWh.

u/nubsrevenge · 16 pointsr/buildapc

no application that i know of can do that, you will have to buy a kill-a-watt or equivalent meter

u/ThatGuyinHouston · 15 pointsr/houston

Biggest current draw is usually A/C equipment, but if you have a lot of incandescent light bulbs, those use lots of electricity. Some older big flat-screen TVs can use a lot too.


Get one of these and check all the devices you plug in. Maybe one of them is using more than it should.


u/mcain · 13 pointsr/vancouver

I think that is a good idea. We have a household of 4-5 (gas heating, hot water, I work at home with a power-hungry computer running 12 hours a day) and largest 2-month Hydro bill has been $190 in the last 5 years.

Biggest consumers in our house: laundry, cooking, spot electric heating in winter.

Log onto your BC Hydro account, drill down to daily (hourly) usage, and see if there is a constant drain or spikes. We're typically running 3-6 cents/hour overnight. Is your baseline somewhat higher - if so, this might be an appliance that is plugged in.

You could buy an electricity meter and run through what you have plugged in: https://www.amazon.ca/P3-P3IP4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU/ - run a fridge/freezer for a couple days to get an average.

u/obscurityknocks · 13 pointsr/BuyItForLife

My husband is one of those guys who has everything and if he does want something he just gets it. He is so hard to buy for.

So my brother gave him a truly unique gift that he seems to use a LOT. It's a small book called "Pocket Ref" by Thomas J Glover. This thing is amazing, it has all sorts of technical information that I never had even thought about.

Another item out of all the stuff I've gotten him over the years, that he LOVES is a gadget, but it's a useful gadget. It's an electricity usage meter. Here is an example, there are tons out there, and he tests out the usage every time we get another appliance or anything that is plugged in.

Lastly, a good flashlight is something that was invaluable to him, he finds that he likes flashlights that are rechargeable. We live in an area with hurricanes and tornadoes so we lose power frequently. Here is his favorite flashlight.

u/KnyteTech · 13 pointsr/legaladvice
  1. You have to pay that bill. Just suck it up and do it or things will get a lot worse.

  2. Most likely you have something that is failing and drawing a lot of excess power. Snag yourself a Kill-a-Watt Meter and go around your house. Everything that plugs into the wall, gets plugged into that. No joke, I've seen an alarm clock sucking down over 100W of power (I'm amazed it wasn't on fire).

  3. Don't unplug your appliances. That is literally pants on head idiotic. If you unplug your fridge for 8 hours a day, it'll consumer more power getting back down to temperature than it would have just maintaining that temp. Not to mention the negative impact on your food. Your washer and dryer should draw effectively zero power when plugged in, but again the kill-a-watt should tell you this.

  4. check for gaps in weather stripping around your doors. Small gaps that allow air through will drive up your cooling costs significantly. Same thing for your windows. The Landlord basically HAS to fix these issues, no questions asked.

  5. Ask your landlord to swap out your dryer if your unit has one in it. More often than not, THIS is the appliance that's actually using the most power in your apt, not your AC unit.
u/sunthas · 13 pointsr/BuyItForLife

TCO is a major driving factor in the BIFL philosophy.

The idea of buying something once, and using it for the rest of your life, even if you have to spend a premium up front is generally much less costly in the long run. Other factors that are important that this fridge likely has is repairability and quality.

If you want to test everyone's concern for yourself, get a kill-a-watt device and measure the power usage for yourself.

u/AKZeb · 12 pointsr/microgrowery

You'll want to read up on Inrush Current. When devices such as light bulbs and electric motors are first powered on they draw much more than their normal operating current. Switching on several at once on a single outlet is likely drawing more current than the outlet is intended for. As an experiment try having only one device at a time plugged in when you flip the switch and see if it behaves properly. You could then try adding the devices back one at a time to see what its threshold is.

It might be a good idea to pick up an inexpensive watt meter to see how much power you're trying to pull from the outlet.

u/Laptop_mini · 12 pointsr/microgrowery

I am currently taking a class in college about renewable energy and how we can improve the efficiency of energy consumption, and as part of a big homework assignment, we have to evaluate our daily consumtion of energy.

To help us evaluate how much energy we use, they gave us "Kill-a-Watts" monitors which measure the voltage, the Amps, the Watts and also calculates the Kilowatts per hour.

We're supposed to use this with our computer, toaster, tv, but I thought auditing my grow op would be interesting.

u/wordfountain · 10 pointsr/askscience

For what it's worth, you could just buy a kill-a-watt or similar product and find out. I own one of these and it has been fascinating to plug all the things into it and see what their active/passive power draws are.

u/datwrasse · 10 pointsr/boston

you can get a killawatt so that you can keep track of its usage:

http://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

its really not that expensive to kick on a small one for a few hours each day... but also if your roommates dont want you running an AC when its 90 degrees out then your roommates can suck it.

u/Inigo93 · 10 pointsr/AskEngineers

I'd buy a kill-a-watt..

u/celest712 · 10 pointsr/tifu

This doesn't even make sense. Your PC is only using high amounts of energy when you are actually using it. Modern chips switch to low power mode (shutting off cores, reducing clock speed) when nothing is happening.

If you want to really know how much energy your pc is using, get a kill-a-watt https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1524850069&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65

My bet is at idle you're probably using 120 watts max when it's doing nothing, and maybe 400 watts when you are playing a game maxing out the cpu and graphics

u/major_wood_num2 · 9 pointsr/Electricity

https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

Plug it into this and give him the appropriate amount of money every month.

u/rawkuts · 9 pointsr/NoStupidQuestions

What gadgets are you talking about? If they are things that /u/PhpXp described then yes, those are useless.

If it's something like a Kill A Watt Monitor then kind of. All that device does is tell you how much energy you're drawing from something plugged into it.

It doesn't directly save you any money, but once you realize how much energy you use from stuff that is plugged in but not 'on', you may be more inclined to unplug electronics so they are not drawing power at all times.

u/NicoC72 · 9 pointsr/PS4

Here is an article that includes a graph with the power consumption of each model in the different power modes. It is really easy to measure this stuff if you have a device like a Kill a Watt.

u/crazyk4952 · 9 pointsr/Frugal

> Each winter I end up using a electric heater, is this the best way to keep warm?

Probably. Most space heaters use about 1500 Watts of energy. If you are curious how much energy it uses over time, you can get a Kill-A-Watt.

Plug one of those in and use your heater for a week, then check how many kWH you've used. You can look at a recent power bill and find out how much your electric company charges per kWH.

Multiply (energy usage for a week in kWH) (cost per kWH) 4 = estimated cost to run your heater for a month. You may have to revise this as the outdoor temperature gets colder and your heater runs more.

u/24nm · 8 pointsr/halifax

You could grab one of those Kill-A-Watt meters for about $30 (Link to example: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00009MDBU/ but you can find generic variants everywhere) and see what the actual power consumption of each device is. It will also give you power factor, but as far as I know, NSP only bills based on active power, not reactive power, consumed. Maybe you have a failing power supply or faulty device that is drawing excessive amounts of power.

u/duvall348 · 7 pointsr/Frugal

It may be worth it to purchase a Kill A Watt to better understand how much electricity certain appliances use.

u/WormholePerson · 7 pointsr/electricians

You want a Kill-A-Watt if it is a gas heater and is powered from a 120v socket.

More info is needed if it is electric, like make, model, and how it’s wired in.

u/psimwork · 7 pointsr/buildapc

Prior to the machine being built, some sites can do estimates, but there's no way to know for sure until it's built and you measure the draw at the wall using something like a kill-a-watt

u/Malort_without_irony · 7 pointsr/RealEstate

This is what I'm familiar with. Individual outlets rather than circuits.

Still, it sounds like more a management problem than an engineering problem, particularly if you already know who the culprit is.

u/wuuza · 6 pointsr/StLouis

Or for $20 you can just measure them. Lots of things don't really go off anymore and continue to use several watts. Wasteful and expensive, so I measured everything and found a few to unplug when not in use.

u/Swampfoot · 6 pointsr/Frugal

Buy a Kill-A-Watt. That is all.

Well, it's not all, really - it lets you see precisely how much power a device is using (limited to 115 volt devices, though). You can set it to record usage over a set time period and see what it's used. That way you are not in the dark at all about the usage of anything that uses 115 volts. You will know how much it uses, and can then cut usage back more intelligently.

u/NeededANewName · 6 pointsr/Frugal

It really depends on the device. Most cell phone charges and small things only draw ~1w while not being used, however I've seen reports of some TVs drawing as much as 50w while turned off which works out to about $50/year where I live ($0.11/kwh). Generally for small devices you can tell just by feeling them; if they're warm they're wasting power.

The only way to really know for sure is to get something like a kill-a-watt and check each device. Most won't be worth unplugging but there may be one or two that are.

u/davy_crockett · 6 pointsr/solar

Watts are a measure of power

Watt-hours are a measure of energy

​

Add "kilo" to the front of each unit and it gets multiplied by 1000.

​

Power is instantaneous and energy is power over a period of time. Think of them like speed and distance. Just like a faster car will go farther in the same amount of time, a solar panel with a higher kw rating will generate more energy in the same time than a lower kw panel (assuming sunlight conditions and orientation are the same).

​

When a solar panel is rated for, say, 100 watts, that means that under certain laboratory conditions (a certain amount and intensity of sunlight, a certain temperature of the solar cells), a brand-new panel will produce 100 watts of instantaneous power. However, in the real world, the amount of sunlight varies, the temperature varies, and that same panel will often produce less than 100w or sometimes more than 100w.

​

If you want to get a sense of how much a watt and watt-hour really is, then I recommend getting a Kill A Watt meter. It's something that you put between an appliance and a wall outlet and will measure how many watts and watt-hours that appliance uses for however long you have it connected. You can also check the electricity bill for your house, which will show how much energy (measured in kilowatt-hours) your house uses in different months of the year.

u/Unclemeow · 6 pointsr/nyc

I hope you're not being ironic/sarcastic because that's a great question. You can use a Kill A Watt. Plug it into the wall and plug his electric eater or whatever on the other side and you can measure electricity usage in kilowatt hours. Then look on your bill for the kWh rate you're charged by Con Ed (or alternate supplier) and calculate the cost. The Kill a Watt might even do this automatically for you.

u/Hyppy · 6 pointsr/buildapc

For UPSs, you need to worry about two main things; the UPS design type and the wattage rating.

---

For UPS design types, there are 3 main categories.

  • A "standby" UPS switches from wall power to battery power when it senses a drop in voltage using a mechanical switch.
  • A "line-interactive" UPS replaces that mechanical switch with a transformer and some more intelligent circuitry.
  • An "online" UPS actually runs the load on battery at all times, isolating your equipment from the wall power as much as possible.

    A line-interactive UPS is good for most gaming PCs , since standby units can be really hit-or-miss. If you have the cash to shell out, an online UPS is even better but for most people is way overkill.

    ---

    For wattage rating, you need to at minimum match the actual power draw of your computer when at full load. The best method is to use a power meter like the Kill-A-Watt, but not everyone has access to one.

    To conservatively estimate this without a power meter, take the TDP or wattage rating of all your components and multiply it by 1.3 to account for varying (in)efficiencies of PSUs. If you don't know your components' TDP, you can get a tally by putting all your parts into PCPartPicker and checking the power symbol on the top right. If you really don't want to do all that work and just want an easy safe but probably overkill choice, then multiply your PSU's wattage rating by 1.25.

    Don't forget to include your monitor, modem, router, and any other peripherals that you want to include on the UPS!

    ---

    For general UPS vendor recommendation: The CyberPower AVR (CPxxxxAVR) series and the Tripp-Lite Smart LCD Tower (SMARTxxxxLCDT) series are great line-interactive units for most home use. The Tripp-Lite OmniSmart, CyberPower PFC, and APC Back-Ups Pro lines are a bit of a step up, but not exorbitant overkill.

    Be SURE that you are looking at the wattage rating and not the volt-amp (VA) rating of your prospective UPS. The UPS's wattage rating is generally 60% of its VA rating. Most UPS units are marketed by their VA ratings, so be careful.
u/TAOLIK · 6 pointsr/vandwellers

>Is the volt chart from Wagan Tech really correct?

Looks more or less close, I think a netbook would use more. The best way to find out is to check yourself with a killawatt.

>I think a trucker fridge or something designed for RVs would have a lower consumption.

You should look into a chest freezer conversion. It is very simple all you need is a thermostat controller, it is easily customizable. During the hot summer my outdoor chest freezer used 200 watts A DAY. Right now it uses about 10 watts a day because it's outside.

>What does 150AH a day require to support it? How fast would that drain a deep cycle battery?

Deep cycle batteries have different ratings for 20 hour periods. Example a battery with 150AH rating for 20 hours, would be able to support 150 Amp hours over 20 hours-meaning it could support 7.5 amps an hour. Which would translate to 90watts of DC an hour (7.512), OR 720watts AC an hour assuming inverter is 80% efficient(7.5120*0.8).

>24V deep cycle marine batteries are what I thought was gold-standard for van applications.

The gold standard is usually 12V battery systems, whether it's two 6v's run in a series or one 12v battery.

For more information I urge you to visit handy bob's site, which is a little harder to read but a wealth of knowledge.

u/FagFagBinks · 6 pointsr/buildapcsales

This is a lower price on Amazon, and has an average historical price on Amazon of $19.56.

I purchased this on Dec 27, 2013 for $19.88.

http://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

Considering that not everybody will get Prime free shipping, Amazon marketplace sellers also sell this for $19.99 w/ FS.

I guess I just want to point out that this isn't exactly a spectacular price that should incite you to BUY BUY BUY.

u/nicholsml · 6 pointsr/buildapc

You can also get a meter and show them. His estimate is good, but the wats would most likely be much lower. Without a GPU you probably hover around 80wats total system draw with peaks just over a 100.

https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

https://www.amazon.com/d/Industrial-Power-Meters/TS-836A-Energy-Voltage-Electricity-Monitor/B00E945SJG

u/Mastinal · 6 pointsr/talesfromtechsupport

Here you go. Figure it out for an actual install in your facility.

http://www.amazon.ca/P3-International-P4400-Kill-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

u/Deranged40 · 6 pointsr/homelab

Kill-a-watt is a popular device that you can plug into your wall, then plug something into it. It will monitor and display your actual usage.

There are other competitors to this product as well. In addition to this, it's always a good idea to have your PC or homelab behind a UPS. Most, if not all UPSs made nowadays will allow you to connect it to your PC or server via USB and will also let you access the actual power draw via a window on your computer.

Your whole house is already being monitored in a way that you can view. There's a power meter outside your house (unsure where this might be if you're in an apartment) and it will read total Watts used. Usually in Kilowatthours.

u/Dummies102 · 6 pointsr/homeowners

not sure on what a jacuzzi costs to operate, but if you want to know how much electricity something's drawing, I recommend getting one of these: https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1517522456&sr=8-1&keywords=kill-a-watt

If you're able to use that on the heater, you should get a really accurate idea of what it's costing

u/SherrifOfNothingtown · 6 pointsr/homeowners

Now, I wouldn't be in this situation because I would never buy in a HOA, so grains of salt and all that. But what I would do is find where the sprinkler stuff plugs in, and have the HOA buy a kill a watt or equivalent meter, and plug the sprinkler system into it. Then a HOA board member could read it annually and reimburse you, or roll it in with the water.

u/IcyKettle · 6 pointsr/HomeImprovement

Some good responses already. Some more info...

Very few of your devices (electronics, phones, tablets, chargers, etc), if any, are going to draw more than an amp. It'd take quite a few to overload the circuit. Heaters cause fires because they draw a TON of amps. Usually more than 10. So, while they're often safe in general on a 15A circuit, if you plug them into a cheapo power strip or extension cord with light-gauge wires, those wires can quickly become too hot and catch fire. It's easy to find thick gauge extension cords that are safe for heaters. Power strips less so. It's easier to tell people, "just don't do it" than it is to explain the issues at hand.

The easiest way to know for sure how many amps all your devices are pulling is to use a Kill-A-Watt meter. Measure them independently, or a few at a time, then add them up.

u/thomas533 · 6 pointsr/Frugal

Get a Kill-a-Watt. Leave it hooked up to the TV. Tell your brother that he is responsible for the costs of electricity for every hour past X hours per night. Put the money in a jar on the counter so that he can see how much money he is loosing by being a douche bag and falling asleep with the TV on. He'll learn to turn off the TV.

u/Absentee23 · 5 pointsr/microgrowery

First, you need the total watts your grow room uses. This includes lights (actual watts, not "equivalent"), fans, pumps, co2 controllers, anything that plugs in and is involved with the growing process.

Second you need to calculate how many watts that stuff uses per day, this depends on a lot of things, the biggest I think, being veg vs flower. Lights on longer in veg (given the same light) than in flower will use more power in a day. Changing lights from fluros in veg to big HIDs in flower, lights will be on for a shorter time, but use more power in that time.

Third, you need the cost of your electricity, which is measured in cents per kWh (kilowatt hours). For example, one 1000w (1kW) HID run for 1 hour, uses 1 kWh of energy. One 250w HID run for 4 hours, uses 1kWh.
Here are area/state averages for cost per kWh. The numbers listed are cents per kWh.

You need to take the total hours everything in your room is running in a month. (This is all simplified, pretty much to calculate just lights and fans, other intermittently on things are a little more tedious to calculate)

12 hours a day in flower X 30 days = 360 hours

Multiply that by how many watts your room uses (this gives you your watt/hours, not kWh. For simplicity, I'm going to calculate for a single 1000w HID, and nothing else, the 1000w number would be the total watts your grow room uses):

360 hours X 1000w = 360,000 watt/hours

Then divide that by 1,000 and you get the number of kWh your room uses.

360,000 wH / 1000 = 360 kWh

Now, you have the kWh your room uses in a month. You can take your states average (or your actual cost if you have the bill with you) cents per kWh, and multiply the two for the total cost of your room per month. We'll say its 13 cents per kWh.

360 kWh X $0.13 = *$46.80 per month** (for just the 1000w HID in flowering)

Now from there you can calculate the cost of the whole grow. Will it take four months total? Five? Multiply the months by the cost per month for the total cost of the grow from seed to harvest. It's a little more complex if you want to calculate an exact cost, lights and fans are simple for example, they are always running. Pumps and co2 regulators, other controllers, etc. are not constantly running, but run intermittently so it's harder to calculate how much power those use, so I suggest doing it separately, because frankly I'm too high to think about that haha. If you really want to be exact, buy a Kill-A-Watt or two and plug your stuff into them, they will measure the exact amount of power used.

u/ThatIsMrDickHead2You · 5 pointsr/teslamotors

One of these will do the trick if you are using a 120V socket and pulling less than 15A

u/learntorv · 5 pointsr/RVLiving

Get a Kill A Watt device and measure how much power it’s using.

https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

I’d actually expect a PC to be fairly minimal (vs appliances that make heat or cooling).

u/old-gregg · 5 pointsr/Amd

I doubt the 10w number. In my case the difference between "3Ghz all the time" and regular P-states is 0.5W from the wall, as measured by kill-a-watt, when the CPU is idle. I am starting to believe that frequency governance on the OS level is mostly bullshit now. Seems like the modern CPUs are pretty good at not consuming any power when there's nothing for them to do, regardless of the reported current frequency.

u/DarthRatty · 5 pointsr/Frugal

I suspect this answer may already have been given, but it's been deleted. Therefore, check out the Kill-a-Watt.

u/imadeofwaxdanny · 5 pointsr/buildapcsales

I don't know what's up with the people downvoting and giving the wrong answer. The most power that can be supplied from this is 600W, meaning that that's the most it'll give your computer. Most people don't max out their power supplies, so you could potentially use it on a computer that had a higher wattage power supply. I bought one of these to measure my power usage at load and bought one above that. To be safe, you could also buy one that is equal or greater wattage than your PSU. Some other people are saying that the wattage is how long you can run from the battery -- a higher wattage is likely to mean that you'll be able to run for longer if it's higher than what you need, but the wattage measures energy output per second rather than total energy capacity. If the wattage of the UPS is lower than the wattage you need, it's likely to not work at all.

u/dmann99 · 5 pointsr/3Dprinting

Pick up a Kill A Watt, has answered a lot of questions for me on power draw and distribution around the house.

​

https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

u/ioncloud9 · 5 pointsr/energy

Try this: https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=killawatt&qid=1550896050&s=gateway&sr=8-1

Tells you how much power draw is happening. Your TV and router use a VERY small amount of power. Things that use a lot of power: furnace, hot water heater, electric heat, AC, incandescent bulbs, desktop computers that are always on, old appliances like an old fridge, old dishwasher, ovens. $300 does seem excessive. Check the bill and see what your fixed delivery fee is and the price per kw/h. Where I live its around $0.11 per kwh and the fixed connection fee is about $11 a month.

This is also the winter time and your heating, even in NC might be forced hot air with an electric heating element. That is crazy power hungry and costs a lot to run. My average bill is between $100-$130 a month and last January we had a cold snap with 7" of snow and it cost me $250 a month for electricity because of the extra heat. Try turning your heat down to 65. Now that the winter is nearing an end, you might see your electric bill go back to some semblance of normal for a month or two before AC season.

u/zakabog · 5 pointsr/pcmasterrace

Your software is only aware of how much power your CPU is drawing as it goes through your motherboard. For the PC itself you would need an external device like a kill-a-watt

u/Jabberwocky918 · 5 pointsr/electricians

Most online calculators will say "for reference only" or something to that effect, meaning that the numbers that the site produces are only educated guesses. The A/C unit has had its electrical draw actually measured by the manufacturer as required by law, and is accurate.

1.75 kW will equal just over 15 amps. You can easily prove exactly what the unit draws by getting a [Kill-A-Watt] (http://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU) and measuring the load yourself. The Kill-a-watt claims a 0.2% accuracy.

u/MereMedusa · 5 pointsr/HomeImprovement

Check out a clamp meter. You would need to be able to get to the wiring near the breaker to measure the amp draw there.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00NWGZ4XC

There are also ones you can put between the outlet and item, but that only measures that item, not the whole load. It only works on 110v items (not an electric dryer).
https://www.amazon.com/P4400-Kill-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

u/JeffroGymnast · 5 pointsr/overclocking

That's cutting it pretty close. Keep in mind that PSU's are generally rated at a higher temperature than your room probably is at, though.
You could buy a Kill-A-Watt and see how much power you're pulling as you overclock. As a rough estimate, overclocking power is generally linear with clockspeed and quadratic with voltage.

u/Phaedrus0230 · 4 pointsr/TinyHouses

pick up one of these: a Kill A Watt and measure your personal power usage. Its probably lower than you think. Computers generally use less than half of what their power supply is capable of using. They only approach that cap for short periods of time, and even then only when running very intensive applications.

For web development, you aren't going to be taxing your computer too much. Gaming will likely be the primary power suck for you.

Basically, measure your actual usage so you can design a system that will suit your needs... but its most certainly doable.

u/svirbt · 4 pointsr/hometheater

Get a power meter and plug everything into a power strip then into the power meter.

u/Flightless_Ferret · 4 pointsr/AskMen

I'm just going to throw out a list or two here and you can skim it:

  • Full socket wrench set
  • PC tools (whether you're into pc repairs or not, they offer many nifty little tools you often use elsewhere)
  • Drill'n'bits
  • Long screwdriver (flat head/Phillips)
  • A fucking magnitizer/demagnitizer (you'll wonder how you lived without one)
  • Hammer / nails


    Not needed, but fun as hell:

  • Wattage meter for outlets (only need one) "What the hell is causing this high electric bill?"
  • Infrared thermometer "I bet that frying pan is cool by now..."

    Oh edit - not tools, but useful in said tool kit:

  • Many types of tape electrical, two sided, painters, etc
  • Super glue
  • Batteries (at least AA, AAA - you'll thank me when the power is out next)
  • A good flashlight (or 3)
  • An LED work light bar thing
  • A head lamp
u/gordonator · 4 pointsr/mac

You're looking for a Kill-a-watt...

u/[deleted] · 4 pointsr/techsupportmacgyver

Ammeters are hardly expensive - Kill A Watt

u/kourelpa · 4 pointsr/battlestations

I haven't directly checked on this setup yet. One thing you can do though is buy a "kill a watt" monitor that goes between the socket and your power cords, which measures the killawatt-hours. then you find the price per KWH for your electric provider and crunch the number for your monthly usage.

That way you find the direct cost of just those components, and not your fridge and everything else in the house.

u/_PM_ME_YOUR_SMILE · 4 pointsr/explainlikeimfive

Get a Watt Meter

Multiply by the rate your electric company charges

u/Those_arent_pillows · 4 pointsr/buildapc

Power(W) = Current(I) x Volts(V), You would need a current meter plus a Volt meter to get this information. Easier to just buy plug in device that does everything for you. This will give you what it costs to run a device over time as well.

http://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

u/rabidfurby · 4 pointsr/SeattleWA

When you first turn the thermostat up, the load will be high because it's trying to reach that new setting. Once it reaches the set point it should level off and not need nearly as much to maintain equilibrium. A better way to calculate the price is to take two meter readings, say 24 hours apart, and calculate your daily usage. Do that two separate days, one at the lower thermostat setting, one at the higher. Not a perfect comparison, because outside temperature and use of your other appliances will effect the reading, but it's better than "look how fast the wheel is spinning!".

If it's running continuously at the higher draw even once the thermostat reaches the set point, your insulation sucks. Look at sealing edges of doors and windows, using thicker curtains, etc. A lot of this depends on whether you rent or own, and how old your place is.

If you only need a specific room to be warmer, like your bedroom while you sleep, you can also get a cheap space heater that'll use less than the heater for your entire house. A heater on a wall outlet can also be used with a Kill-A-Watt to give you an exact reading of how much energy it's using and how much it costs to operate.

Also, even if the heat is as expensive as you think it is, it may be cheap compared to the cost of having an unhappy wife.

u/Shadilay_Were_Off · 4 pointsr/BuyItForLife

Wouldn't be too hard or time consuming to do - get one of these power consumption meters (actually these are awesome to have even after the experiment is done - it can become a bit of an obsession) and plug the vacuum into it and use as normal. Do the same run again with the other vacuum.

The meter will give you the actual consumption in kWH, then you just multiply that by how much time you had to run each vacuum.

u/EliteAssassin07 · 4 pointsr/overclocking

There are a lot of variables to take into account that really make this difficult to answer. If you really want to know how much power you are using the best way to figure that out is by purchasing a Kill A Watt from Amazon (link below). You will use this device to see exactly how much power the PSU is pulling at the wall, by plugging the PSU directly into the device. You will than need than to take into account the efficiency ratting for the PSU, in your case its 80%, see example below.

​

Example:

Lets say that your power supply is pulling 500w at the wall (on the Kill A Watt) and with an 80% efficiency ratting there will be around a 20% loss. So you will take 500 * 0.2 = 100, that is a loss of 100w's meaning that your power supply is outputting 400w's of its available 650w's of output power.

​

Also keep in mind that ideally you are going to want to leave 10% to 15% head room on your power supply to take into account for power spikes, etc. So that means that with a 650w power supply you would not want to use anymore than 552w's at any given time.

​

Amazon Link For Kill A Watt:

https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=sr_1_1?crid=NJPSQWRGAKDC&keywords=killawatt&qid=1550778287&s=gateway&sprefix=kill%2Caps%2C391&sr=8-1

​

Hope this helps!

u/Rectangle91 · 4 pointsr/Amd

Make sure you have all of the newest drivers. If you're unsure, use the AMD driver clean uninstall tool, reset your computer and download the newest drivers from their site (not the disc that came with the card. Just don't even use it.)

After you have the updated software, open the Radeon AMD settings console (right click on desktop). There's a global overdrive header in the gaming section of the console where you can do/check basic overclocking functionality. Make sure the "target temperature" slider is set to its max at like 75 degrees. If you set it lower (like 30) it'll thermal throttle your card at 30 degrees. Even at its max, and under a high overclock if you choose to go that route7, the card never reaches above 50 degrees with a good fan profile.

Buy a 20 dollar kill-a-watt from amazon and plug it into the wall/powerstrip where your computer goes, and plug your computer into the kill-a-watt unit. It'll tell you how much power your computer is pulling from the wall. Multiply this power by the efficiency of your psu (info should be available online somewhere) at that many watts, and it will tell you how much power your PSU is supplying to your PC. If that number isn't anywhere near the limit of your PSU, then your PSU is not a problem.

To be clear, I am certain your psu is not a problem here. Benchmark your fury x using the utility on this site and it will compare how your card is performing compared to how everyone else's is performing. If yours is super low there might be an issue. Please keep in mind, a lot of people who run this benchmark overclock their cards. So if yours reads "90%" of average, it's probably exactly where it should be for a stock card.

u/vhalros · 4 pointsr/boston

Electric usage can vary a lot from person to person. Does it have an electric stove? Dryer? How new is the refrigerator?

I think worst case you would spend a $150/month on electricity, if you basically waste it. You could also get it to be under $40 or even less (at least if you are the only one living there).

Things to do to save money on electricity: use a clothes drying rack instead of a dryer (this is usually the biggest one), replace incandescent bulbs, find and unplug appliances that drain electricity for stand by mode (can be surprisingly significant). The last one can be accomplished using a energy meter like this one; you can actually check these out from many of the libraries around here.

This applies more in the summer, but you can reduce AC usage by opening your windows at night and sucking in as much cool air as possible with a fan (at least until it is hot even at a night...). Then close all the windows and drapes in the morning to block out the sun and warm day-time air.

Some of these obviously require an initial investment; I'll let you figure out if they make sense for you.

u/garfinmcd · 4 pointsr/homeowners

Do you have a washer/dryer in the home? Depending on how often you are doing laundry, this can really contribute to your electric usage. If you have a large or older refrigerator, that can have a big impact as well.

You can buy a tool called a Kill A Watt to test how much electricity certain appliances are using. This can help you pin down the cause. Amazon link here: http://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

What type of hot water heater do you have?

u/crazy_goat · 4 pointsr/hometheater

Holy shit you've got some faulty wiring in that place. It would appear as though it's sending some kind of surge - or enough interference to cause the HDMI handshake to fail and reset. The TV itself does not appear to be resetting - it's the handshake with the HDMI device. (You'd see a boot up sequence for the samsung if the whole TV powered down.)

If I were a betting man - I'd assume that your entire apartment is on a single circuit (very bad) - and it's causing voltage drops when you turn on more stuff. The voltage drops are likely to blame - but can be very hard on your electronics.

You may need to get a killawatt or measure the AC current coming from the wall with a multimeter.

http://www.avsforum.com/forum/90-receivers-amps-processors/1985538-hdmi-signal-lost-when-turning-off-light-switch.html

u/jameschoyce · 4 pointsr/PleX

Something like a Kill-A-Watt would let you plug everything into a power bar then plug the power bar into the Kill-A-Watt and measure the total power draw of everything.

u/foonly · 4 pointsr/Frugal

First, understand the mechanism by which your fridge cools itself in the first place. Whatever you do, make sure to maintain plenty of air flow.

Don't use foam or newspaper, as they'll collect bacteria.

Now, think about those water jugs. Gee, they keep things nice and cool, and resist temperature changes so much better than air, right?

When you open the door of the fridge, warm air gets in, and the water jugs absorb the heat, and then...

... and then the fridge cools the air some more, and the heat in the water gets absorbed back into the air... and the fridge then expends the same amount of energy to cool the air as it would have in the first place.

So all the water jug really does is it reduces the volume of warm outside air that can get into the fridge when you open it. Jugs full of air, or vacuum, or just keeping food in your fridge, would work just as well.

So cut down on empty space in your fridge, but keep plenty of airflow. Get a Kill-a-Watt and measure the "before" and "after" consumption of all your plug-in devices to verify that your efforts are really working.

If you don't see yourself saving more than the $23 bucks the Kill-a-Watt costs on Amazon, then don't bother.

If you don't keep your fridge full, sell it to whoever is willing to haul it out of there, and buy yourself a nice, modern, mini-fridge.

Just remember that having a full-sized fridge/freezer will save you plenty of money by keeping ingredients fresh and freezing bulk meals that you prepare yourself.

Look for government rebates on energy-efficient appliances. In fact, pore through the entirety of energysavers.gov if you're serious about this stuff.

Also, make sure that these energy projects are the most money-saving projects you can do for your time and effort right now. I'm guessing there is other low-hanging fruit you could attack to lower your costs, or increase your revenues [learn to think like an entrepreneur and seek out novel sources of additional income].

u/rkohliny · 4 pointsr/DataHoarder

Hi, I am looking to build something similar due to my ample data hoarding needs and this seems perfect with a small footprint, I also live in nyc and living here presents a challenge with space. Anyways I was wondering if you could post power consumption specs preferably at idle and at full load and anything in between that you can do without much trouble. Best way to do this is if you have a kill-a-watt but If you don't already have it I would definitely recommend getting it as it is only 19 bucks on amazon, can be used for much more than just replying to this comment (lol), and is great for tracking watt usage and power consumption that can translate into real world savings. Thanks in advance either way

u/PhoenixReborn · 4 pointsr/buildapc

Something like this. Plug it into the wall and plug your PSU into it.

http://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

The voltage isn't something you can or would even want to change. The power supply puts out specific voltages for different components to use. You probably mean the wattage. The only real way to increase this is with a new power supply.

u/LT_lurker · 3 pointsr/electricians

You can get a plug in wattmeter like this https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00009MDBU/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1505918439&sr=8-3&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=watt+meter&dpPl=1&dpID=41jXOUcM37L&ref=plSrch

The only device you listed that i think would consume power when off might be your guitar amp. This will prove that even if your devices are draining power your talking dollars a year if not less.

u/MintGreenTulip · 3 pointsr/JUSTNOMIL

To add to this, they sell electric usage monitors that you can probably use for a day/week to see how much it actually consumes. There are other models to choose from. My husband had a class where he got to use something similar to monitor our bigger appliances.

Might not be practical for use all the time but at least gives you an idea of how much electricity an appliance might be actually using. Granted, it's a justnomil and will probably argue the facts.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00009MDBU/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1522412759&sr=8-3&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=electrical+appliance+energy+monitor&dpPl=1&dpID=41jXOUcM37L&ref=plSrch

u/hga_another · 3 pointsr/DataHoarder

In addition to the other suggestions, get something to measure usage, like this Kill A Watt model that I use.

u/Alternate_reality_me · 3 pointsr/personalfinance

There might be an error at their end. What you could do from now on is record your power usage and then compare it with your meter or with what you have on the bill.
For that you could use something like this: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00009MDBU/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1473446393&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=power+meter&dpPl=1&dpID=41IfD%2Byy1BL&ref=plSrch

You plug it into your mains and then you plug everything else in this device as long as it wont go over the electric current limits.

u/techy2 · 3 pointsr/AskReddit

Does the AC plug into a socket or is it hard wired?
If it is in a socket, then get a power meter and then you can measure exactly how much power it uses. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00009MDBU/ref=nosim/getrichslo-20/

u/5-4-3-2-1-bang · 3 pointsr/DataHoarder

Best way is to. measure the actual electricity draw [worst case] while the system is running. Think killawatt Then size the UPS accordingly.

Failing that, you have to kind of guess. You can usually ballpark what the motherboard uses from the spec sheets, same with cpu and drives. Add some slop on top, buy the next biggest one.

u/edselpdx · 3 pointsr/Frugal

Get yourself a Kill-a-Watt and test for yourself.

I have fixed some of this with my entertainment system by investing in one of these. It turns off power to peripherals if the TV itself is off--my Apple TV, DVD player, and connected computer are off-off when the TV's off. I keep my DVR hooked to the always-on plug so it can record things when I'm not home or not watching TV because I hate commercials that much and never watch live TV.

u/Dark_24 · 3 pointsr/buildapc

I do not think your PC is using as much power as you think it is..

The way to test this would be to get a Kill-A-Watt Meter and see exactly how much power you are pulling from the wall..

Just because PCPartspicker says that your build will use 220W does not mean it is always using 220W.. That would be with everything maxed out.. Which I doubt you do on a minute my minute basis..

Like right now my PC a 7700k (overclocked to 4.8Ghz with dual 24 inch monitors running video and about 30 chrome tabs is using exactly 180 watts of power from the UPS I am using that monitors exactly how much power I am using..

I doubt you are drawing even that much unless you are gaming and then I wager you are at about 180 Watts when gaming with your system..

All of your parts are pretty power efficient..

The only things you can do is to have the monitor turn off after a period of time when you are not using your PC..
Set the Turn off display to 5 minutes in the Power options..

The CPU will already throttle down when it is not being taxed..

And of course turn off your PC when not in use.

I think you are putting too much worry into this..

Are you getting your $5 a day based on calculations on suspected Watted being used times cost per kilowatt that you pay? or some other method like before and after you got your PC?

To calculate your exact Power usage and cost get this: https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

or this one which will hold reading in the event of a power outage..
https://www.amazon.com/P3-International-P4460-Electricity-Monitor/dp/B000RGF29Q

Then plug your PC power cords into a power strip and plug that power strip into the meter..

Program it with how much your electricity costs and it will tell you approximately how much it costs to run your PC.

u/NeedsSleepy · 3 pointsr/HomeImprovement

A Kill-a-Watt or multimeter will do the job.

u/Raider1284 · 3 pointsr/litecoinmining

You would want to use a device called a killawatt: http://www.amazon.com/P3-International-P4400-Electricity-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

It will measure how much power your computer is drawing from the wall.

u/OoogaOoogaYoink · 3 pointsr/computers

The wattage on a power supply isn't indicating the power it draws. It's indicating the max power it can supply before shorting out. To know the power consumption per min/hour/day. You need to know how much power each component is consuming. Rather than trying to sit and calculate that. You could buy this device. You enter into it how much your electric company charges you per kW. Then plug your computer in and this device will tell you everything.

u/Computerknight54 · 3 pointsr/buildapc

Most hardware monitoring programs will give numbers buy they're usually not overly accurate.

https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU?ref_=fsclp_pl_dp_4&th=1 Hardware based monitoring is the best option.

u/DealBreakerBreaker · 3 pointsr/EtherMining

Not doing for a get rich quick scheme. I know the returns are much worse than they used to be.

I plan on creating a mining rig in the next month or two to generate Etherium and hold it. From what I have been researching dual mining DCR and ETH at the same time yields the best profits. I would sell the DCR and buy ETH with it.

Mostly it just sounds like Fun + a good way to generate Etherium over time. I know I could just Invest the money in Etherium instead (which I might do that as well) but even if 100% ROI is 10-12 months on a mining rig it makes more sense to me to build and run a rig than it does to drop that same amount of money into Etherium because if the rig becomes unprofitable to run selling the parts (at a 50% loss...which is steep but better to underestimate value IMHO) pushes the ROI closer to 5-6 months.

I haven't been able to find any solid information comparing Dual mining on a Nvidia cards vs an AMD cards so it makes it hard to decide what kind of rig to build.

As for the PSUs If you havent already you might want to calculate wattage required (or better: use a watt meter at the socket) then buy 2 (or more) smaller PSUs that have a total of double the wattage you need and connect them together using a multiple PSU connector (that site is just one example newegg and amazon have others). Running power supplies at half the max wattage makes them run much cooler and more efficient (know this from a beast of a gaming rig with dual 1080 Ti's I helped my friend build). It's also helpful becuase two quality 800 watt PSUs cost about 25% less together than a quality 1600 watt PSU.

Also to stop overheating I am going to probably use one of my grow tents (Medical Marijuana is legal in my state :P) to isolate the rig and circulate air better.

Edit: added (or more) to the 2 PSU sentence

u/kimwim42 · 3 pointsr/Frugal

Do you have a hot tub or pool? Do you power off the computers at night? All vampires unplugged, not just turned off? There is a wattage thing, kilowat that we use, got from amazon.

u/zeta_cartel_CFO · 3 pointsr/pcmasterrace
u/burkholderia · 3 pointsr/ToobAmps

>one pot was set to something like 120mA and the other to the proper range

The schematics I have show one pot in the bias supply, or in the earlier ones no pot. I'm not up on the year-to-year variation of orange amps but I wonder what changes may have been done and not correct on your amp.

>the message boards and fb groups I've been scouring

Acknowledging the obvious irony of the statement, internet wisdom is often worth what you pay for it. The variac approach seems to be a bit of a solution in search of a problem to me. As /u/buzzbotbaloo mentioned, it would be pertinent to know your actual line voltage before assuming you can correct this problem by lowering the voltage. Something like a cheap killawatt meter would tell you exactly what you're working with and help you rule out possible issues.

>sent me and the amp home with an extra fuse.

Interesting approach.

u/ExceptionallyGreat · 3 pointsr/gpumining

I found it best to use something like this instead of relying on software.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00009MDBU/

u/Switchen · 3 pointsr/buildapc

There is not because your computer doesn't know. The best way to monitor power usage would be to use a meter that reads at the wall outlet.

u/vjack11 · 3 pointsr/hometheater

First of all if you have a means to do so you should check whether the active speakers actually draw a meaningful amount of power when idle. If you have something like a Kill-a-watt you can see whether this is a problem that is actually worth solving.

If you want to calculate the cost of power usage: a 1-watt power draw uses about 9 kWh per year. So if your speakers when in standby use 2 watts and you pay $0.15/wkh, it would cost you about $2.70 per year. (IMO that kind of cost is not worth buying equipment to solve.)

But if you have determined that this is a problem that really needs to be solved, there are a few solutions:

  • If you have a receiver with a 12V trigger, you can buy a 12V relay for 120V devices.
  • You can buy an autoswitching power strip that will turn power to some receptacles on and off based on the power draw from a designated receptacle.
  • buy a universal remote that will turn multiple devices on and off together.
u/AMillionMonkeys · 3 pointsr/DIY

You want something like a Kill-a-Watt meter. There are a few different models from that brand and a few different brands offer similar devices it seems. But it will give you a readout of the exact voltage and frequency of your outlet plus track energy usage of whatever is plugged into it.

u/someThrowawayGuy · 3 pointsr/Austin

That's pretty cool.

I've had one for years, and love it. I have analyzed all my electronic equipment and evaluated costs of keeping things powered. Needless to say, I turn almost everything off now, and even got rid of things like alarm clocks.

For anyone wanting to purchase, they're usually $20 or less, and worth every cent!

http://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1414784458&sr=8-1&keywords=kill+a+watt

u/Xanny · 3 pointsr/buildapc

I have a kill-a-watt. Only way to really accurately gauge whole system power consumption since your PSU gets variable efficiency.

u/Candera · 3 pointsr/leaf

I was thinking about using one of these:
http://smile.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1413987597&sr=8-1&keywords=kill+watt+meter

to get an accurate number of KwHs and then multiply that by .09 (my rate for KwHs) and then taking that off the total. I think I'd end up paying less. I tested it but my outlet isn't big enough to hold the trickle charger with this and my garage door opener.

u/Lionheart942 · 3 pointsr/pcmasterrace

Isn't this an estimate based on a certain load percentage? If you want an actual reading, you'd need something like this wattage meter

u/jetah · 3 pointsr/MoneroMining

get a wall meter like Kill a Watt. There might be a few specific models people prefer if you search the sub.

If you're using Windows then look at the bsod code to try to get a direction as to the problem. Quite honestly your title and post don't really help us with troubleshooting.

My PC has been randomly rebooting (i turned off bsod screen) but my mobo gave me an error FF and the DRAM light was on. But i found out it's the RAM slots on the mobo and not the chips.

u/GoingMetaOnYourAss · 3 pointsr/buildapc

If you're talking about measuring the watts used by your current system you'll need one of these

If you're talking about potential usage use a calculator like this

EDIT: I don't think there's software telling you the specific watts used per component if that's what you mean, but I might be wrong :)

u/loztriforce · 3 pointsr/LifeProTips

I use the Kill A Watt : Helps so that you know what not to keep running. Used to run my air purifier all the time, then found it was running at 160W.

I've used post it notes to stick to various things, showing the consumption. Helps to quickly decide whether it should be used sparingly.

u/alanbdee · 3 pointsr/homeowners

I would specifically use an appliance extension cord; but since it's a gas range I doubt I'll draw too much power. If you don't have one you should get one of these inline current meters: https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=pd_sim_60_1?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B00009MDBU&pd_rd_r=a8ba91a8-d96a-11e8-8b2a-43f93729c796&pd_rd_w=IXixx&pd_rd_wg=JOlIJ&pf_rd_i=desktop-dp-sims&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_p=18bb0b78-4200-49b9-ac91-f141d61a1780&pf_rd_r=KD3KRNTF6SM5923BBG9D&pf_rd_s=desktop-dp-sims&pf_rd_t=40701&psc=1&refRID=KD3KRNTF6SM5923BBG9D

​

Then you can simply look at how much power is being drawn by an appliance and that will tell you if you need a heavy gauge extension wire or not.

u/fire4242 · 3 pointsr/electricians

Monitors will pull 1 to 1.5 amps

1000w psu pulls 8.5

Should be around 13 amps on the heavy side

U can buy a watt meter

P3 P4400 Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_apa_i_gMJ1BbK0DZDM3

u/alf3311 · 3 pointsr/personalfinance

>Okay. Experiment time. Close off two rooms on the same side of the house. Turn the fan on in one. Go back around 1:00 PM and tell me which one you want to take a nap in.

Yes fans do help. But if you turn on the fan when you go in the room you get the same effect. No reason to leave it running 24/7. Your experiment would be better done if you leave one fan on for an hour before you enter and the other room just for a minute and see if you can tell a difference. Also FYI it costs about $5/mo to run a ceiling fan 24/7.

>most people fully wash their dishes anyway because dishwashers suck. Doing both is an incredible waste.

I give my dishes a scrub with the back of a sponge if necessary before putting them in the dishwasher. No water required. Obviously if you are washing the dishes twice that is wasteful, but I have also seen a lot of people hand-wash dishes with the hot water on full blast for 20 minutes. The most efficient way to wash dishes is with a dishwasher, once.

>Go around and feel the power supplies of various electronics. If they're hot, they're vamping power. Heat has to come from somewhere.

I have a power draw meter and I just tested a bunch of appliances in my house (all off, obviously):

  • Laptop charger (disconnected from laptop): 0 watts
  • Laptop charger (laptop plugged in & asleep): 0 watts
  • TV: 0 watts
  • Phone charger (disconnected from phone): 0 watts
  • Computer monitor: 0 watts
  • Printer: 0 watts
  • Stereo receiver: 0 watts
  • Rice cooker: 1 watt
  • Microwave: 3 watts
  • Water kettle: 0 watts
  • Toaster oven: 0 watts
  • Coffee maker: 0 watts
  • Humidifier: 0 watts

    Note that the majority of these are drawing no power whatsoever, and the two kitchen appliances that I found with a "vampire power draw" only cost about 30 cents a month. It would be a waste of time to spend your life unplugging everything.
u/Ener_Ji · 3 pointsr/xboxone

You could get a $20 Kill a Watt power monitor and test to see if any of your devices are taking more power than expected. But as others have said, even if the Xbox is not powering down properly, it's pretty unlikely to triple your electricity.

The other thing to do would be to unplug / power off all devices (don't forget major appliances; you can either unplug them or use the breaker box to turn them off), then look at your meter and see if it's still consuming electricity. If it is, you're either leaking current somewhere (a dangerous situation that warrants an electrician call stat), or something is miswired and someone else has something attached to your meter. Happens in multi-unit dwellings but would be pretty unlikely in a single-family home.

If usage stops with everything unplugged / breakers off, you can start turning things on one at a time and see if you notice a spike in usage, but unless it's truly enormous this might be hard to spot.

Other things that could be going on:

  • Look at the days that your bill covers (it's probably on a significant lag and may be covering the holidays). Did you have Holiday lights up, perhaps you entertained and had many guests over? A significant increase in cooking, baking, washing of clothes, dishwasher loads, or baths/showers recently will spike electricity.
  • Did your utility rate go up recently? Look at your KwH used, not just at the price paid.
  • A meter read error. Happens sometimes, and is usually corrected the next time the meter is read.
  • Has someone installed an aquarium? Huge power hogs.
  • Maybe a roommate is running some "grow" lights in her closet?
  • Fridge/freezer is low on coolant and is running continuously in an attempt to keep things cold.
  • Is the fridge/freezer much emptier than usual? A full fridge/freezer uses less power.
  • Similarly, other large electric appliances may start consuming more electricity if they are old and dying.
  • Do you have a pool? Is the pump still on its regular cycle or is it running continuously?
  • Any new lights installed, particularly Halogen lights which are not energy efficient? Are outdoor lights being turned on for longer than normal (perhaps because of a defective timer?)

    ​

    If all else fails, you might have a defective meter. If you suspect this, call your utility and they should come out and test it. If it's faulty, you should get a credit/refund for the estimated increase you were charged.
u/Do_not_reply_to_me · 3 pointsr/answers

I know you're looking for some calculations and power consumption theory, but while we're on the subject I thought you might also be interested in ways to accurately measure this kind of thing.

Here are some items you can buy to help monitor power usage:

https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4330-Kill-Surge-Protector/dp/B004OG94VW

https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

u/jtunzi · 3 pointsr/personalfinance

It might be worth getting an electric usage monitor and making sure they are running efficiently. I had an old fridge using over $30/month because it was running too much.

u/koorbloh · 3 pointsr/firewater

I use this to watch wattage: https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1522779062&sr=8-1&keywords=kilowatt

I don't have a pic handy, but just imagine a homebrew of the milehidistiling thing plugged into the kill a watt thing, because that's what I do.

u/thanatos2k · 3 pointsr/software

Does your PC have trouble with insomnia? Windows lets you set your sleep settings already, and mine don't wake up unless I hit the power button. Hibernate mode will get you down to 0 watts used, sleep might not get it that low. I'd enable hibernation after 10 mins inactivity, and manually shut it off at night when you go to bed.

That ~$15 would be better spent on a Kill-o-watt power meter IMO, you can use that on any device that plugs in to see what power it's drawing, might point you in the right direction of how to save elsewhere too. Also you can use it on your PC to get a good reading of how much power it's using sleep vs hibernate.

u/Immrspy · 3 pointsr/pcmasterrace

It sucks, but you can learn from this, sadly. This is where you can be independent, propose that you purchase a Power Meter to your father, and that you will pay for the power that you use.

(National average in the USA is $0.10 per KWH, but search up for your area. RANDOM CITY TIME! $0.07183/KWH in Kansas City.)

KWH comes from 1,000 watts for 1 hour. My system draws 300 Watts from the wall while stress testing, so I would pay just over $0.02 for every hour of gameplay.

Know what you have said about your father, he may entertain this idea, and you will only pay him pennies as you play, while also having an incentive to not be on the computer all day(Use this if he pushes the whole "You will spend too much time on it" retaliation.

Power meter

To figure out your cost per KWH, just google your energy provider (Ex. Pepco) and your city/state/county/territory/whateveryoulivein (Ex. Kansas City) to create: Pepco cost in Kansas City per KWH

In total, if you play on the computer for 2 hours on average each day, it would cost you $0.04 per day, $1.20 per month, and $14.40 a year. $15 can easily be made by shoveling snow, mowing grass, delivering newspapers, heck, I'm sure if you sold that old laptop of yours, you could instantly get $500 for it, maybe even $750 with some pushing.

In Summary; just set aside some money while you buy your parts for electricity, just make sure to calculate for the cost in summer to go up, as you are let out of school, $15 is conservative for the example, $17 is a good balance, $20 is overkill.

(If you really want to rub it in his face, pay him in only pennies every day, that'll get to his head eventually.)

u/ThePhantomL0Ler · 3 pointsr/dogeducation

As long as your house is wired to code, there shouldn't be a fire hazard. If you exceed the current for a circuit, the breaker will trip and shut everything off, avoiding a fire.

Each breaker in your electrical panel controls one circuit. The circuit usually powers multiple receptacles and/or light fixtures. So you'll want to plug into a circuit that doesn't have a heavy load. If you do, though, you won't damage anything... you'll just trip the circuit and shut everything off (which is annoying, but not dangerous).

Labels in your electrical panel should tell you what's connected to each circuit. If they're missing or inaccurate, you can turn off circuits one by one and observe the results. Then you can attach the UK version of the KillAWatt or something similar to all equipment on a circuit to see how much current is in use. You can use it to see how much current your mining rig uses as well.

A good PSU and a surge protector will go a long way to protect your equipment, too.

u/Epsilon748 · 3 pointsr/Frugal

You can check your computer rating by looking on the power supply on the back where the power plug goes. You may need to open up the case to find the sticker on it though, which is more than most people would want to do.

Another option is to buy a Kill-A-Watt and just measure everything in your house :D (Or borrow one from a friend).

I don't have a DVR, but my $15 electric bill includes a server I run 24/7, set top boxes, router, modem, some network switches, ceiling fan, etc. I don't do too much to cut back, but most of the things I run are low power.

u/Plutonium_man · 3 pointsr/nvidia

Use this 20 dollar miracle. If you're outside the US and don't have 120 V wall sockets, you'll need to google a bit and find a model appropriate for you. Do not try to use this model in a 240V house.

You plug it into your wall (or power strip) and plug your computer into the device. This is the only way to get a real measurement of the power draw of your computer. Make sure to set it to power mode in watts. The measurement on the device is power from the wall, not power through your PSU. You need to convert this to power through the PSU by multiplying it by the efficiency of your PSU at the current wattage. You can find these efficiency curves online. For example, at 400 watts through the wall, the corsair RM850 has 91% efficiency, meaning 400*0.91=364 W of actual power through the PSU.

Check the power draw of your computer at idle, then run a GPU only stress test like furmark. The difference in power here is roughly equal to the maximum power draw of your GPU. Power draw calculating sites have significant (huge) errors on some builds. For example, when I simulated my power draw with a 4790k at 1.325 V and 2 fury x at +96 mV, this site said I'd draw close to a thousand watts. My actual value (from the wall with a ~92% efficient PSU with furmark + prime95 simultaneously) was only 730ish W. This meant the RM850 I owned was actually good enough and I didn't need to buy a 1200 watt psu like the website insisted. Which was good, because those things are like 230 bucks.

u/Aboutanhour · 3 pointsr/hardware

Just stick a Kilowatt usage monitor between your computer and the wall. Get another one for the TV or some other appliance that is used regularly and then compare the two.

You'll want to have some hard data as backup if he gets worried about the electric bill.

u/quespul · 3 pointsr/homelab

I bought this about 8 years ago and it's still rocking and providing the most accurate info from the wall plug.

u/Progressive_Citizen · 3 pointsr/saskatoon

Can buy yourself a kill-o-watt meter and check things. Amazon has a pretty good one, https://www.amazon.ca/P3-P3IP4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

I went through the battle of wrangling my power bill awhile ago. What I found out was:

- Major appliances didn't use much (they do, but they aren't on 24/7 to make a difference, just an hour at most a day).

- Dryer is pretty major. Every load is a few dollars, easily.

- Washer is surprisingly nearly insignificant. Hardly uses any power in comparison to the dryer.

- TV can be a fair bit, couple hundred watts not including a sound system.

- My computer room is massive, idle my monitor + PC + everything else thats plugged in the room draws 200W minimum idle... thats ~$21 per month just sitting there, when in use can speak to near 800W. Its responsible for almost a good $40-$60 a month on my bill.

- Central Air is BY FAR the largest single use of electricity in the whole house. The thing is ~5000 watts (same as the dryer...). About half my summer power bill, or more, is solely based on that thing running. Keep in mind when it runs, the 500W furnace blower fan also has to run...

- In the winter, the furnace being on so much more still racks up the power bill. If my gaming habits (2-6hrs a day usually) get me $60 a month of my bill, the furnace blower is probably close to the same at times.

In short, its your furnace blower, AC and computer / entertainment systems. Check them with a kill-o-watt (120V at least, the 240V things just get a clip on tester for the circuit breaker).

Its hard to optimize the HVAC. If you got a programmable thermostat, have it scheduled. It is absolutely an energy drain to have the home a constant temperature even if you aren't there. Let it go hotter when you are at work in the summer before the AC kicks in, and cooler when you are at work in the summer before the heat kicks in. Saves a fair bit (~20% or more ballpark).

For what its worth, my power bill is typically around ~$90-$110 in the winter and $100-$140 in the summer (mostly thanks to the AC). Newer home, built in 2015, 2-storey, ~1300sqft.

u/hansmoman · 3 pointsr/AskElectronics
u/ZeroPaladn · 3 pointsr/buildapc

Using an in-line wattage meter will give you the total draw from the wall, though this value is usually a little more than what the system is using because your PSU has to convert that AC power from the wall into DC and some power is lost in the transition. Look up your specific PSU model for their efficiency graph and you can do some rough math to find out how much wattage your system is currently using.

u/ChickenFriedSteakAnd · 3 pointsr/personalfinance

Unfortunately it's not as simple as calculating the power of each heater as they'll be engaged for different amounts of time. This depends on the efficiency of both the heaters and their thermostats. With a thermometer in the room on separate days with similar temperatures, humidity, and wind conditions, OP should record over a few hours how long each heater takes to reach a nominal operating ambient temperature, what that temperature is, and how many minutes in each hour the heater is engaged in order to maintain that temperature. This information combined with a known value for power can be used to determine the watt hours necessary to both engage and maintain a comfortable temperature for both heaters. Watt hours can then be used to determine exact savings using their electric bills current rates.

Edit: Or go off the deep end with one of these.

u/baconatedbacon · 3 pointsr/preppers
  1. It depends on the fridge. Sometimes this is listed as amps on the back. Sometimes it is listed as watts. You want to know how many Watts it uses. Watts = voltage Amps. So a normal fridge running at 120V and taking, say, 6 Amps will use 720 watts. The inverter in the Yeti 400 is 400 Watts, which is not enough to power this hypothetical fridge. If the thing you want to measure doesn't list the amount of power it uses, you can determine the number of watts something uses by using a device such as a Kill-a-Watt. A dorm fridge tends to use around 30 watts, which can be powered by the Yeti 400 without a problem.

    mAh (milliAmp hour) refers to the battery capacity. 1,000 mAh = 1 Ah (Amp hour). The Yeti 400 has 33Ah or 33,000mAh. But it is more useful again to convert this into watts, or in this case watt hours. The battery in the Yeti 400 is 12V... so 12V
    33Ah = 396Wh (Watt hours). What does this measurement mean? It means you can power something that uses 396 Watts for one hour. If you have something that uses 100 Watts, it will last roughly 3.96 hours (simply speaking). Or to bring this back to a dorm fridge, it means you could actively run that fridge for about 12 hours. (Fridges have run and idle cycles, I am talking about actually running.)

  2. For bugging in, it depends on what you want to power. I think you will find that batteries and inverters are good for things like laptops, lamps, cell phones, rechargeable walkie talkies, and other small electronics. You won't find many people advocating running a washing machine on batteries and inverters in a grid down scenario.
u/Tylertooo · 2 pointsr/sffpc

The Kill-A-Watt meter is cheap and has great reviews. I've used it numerous times.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00009MDBU/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

u/AllAccessAndy · 2 pointsr/Aquariums

They make electricity monitors like this: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00009MDBU/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1450050781&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=kill-a-watt+meter&dpPl=1&dpID=41ygaCtJwVL&ref=plSrch

You could plug in your various equipment and figure out exactly how much it's really costing your step dad. You also could try it on various other things around the house and help your step dad figure out what really is making the bill so high, because it's definitely not your light.

u/jhigg · 2 pointsr/microgrowery

You could buy one of these to see your actual power usage. : http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00009MDBU/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1420602389&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SY200_QL40

That way you can see if it that or your heating that is doing it

u/hmspain · 2 pointsr/homeautomation

Kill-A-Watt meter; every home should have one :-).

https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU/

u/wagon153 · 2 pointsr/buildapc

No it'll only pull as much as it needs. You could use one of these to find out how much power it is pulling.

http://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

u/cirreus · 2 pointsr/buildapc

Short Answer: Yes, safe bet, can't go wrong (but $$$)

Long Answer: ...

Not exactly as your PC (hopefully) isn't pulling more than 2/3rds of that under max. load. Also something to keep in mind is what else you are plugging into the UPS. Many people put the Monitor as well an accessory or two (like a desk lamp & wireless router/modem) on the battery backup. You can safely put stuff like printers & speakers on the surge protection plugs as they don't pull from the battery.

There is an awesome product called Kill A Watt that you can plug in the wall & see exactly how much juice stuff is using.

But I'm gonna make some assumptions here ... Let's say you want to keep stuff up for at least 15mins (in total blackout) with a monitor, light & modem, likely pushing around ~ 500+ watts , worst case in a "critical gaming session" with everything you want on.

Something like the CyberPower CP1000 or the APC BR1000G would be your best bets.

You can go with a lessor UPS (e.g. less battery power & cheaper), but this will lessen the amount of time you can keep your equipment on & put extra stain on the UPS (or too low, the UPS just won't work & kill the power). Look at a PSU & UPS like a car engine, if you redline it all the time, things will wear out & blow up fast.

u/squindar · 2 pointsr/nyc
u/ziddey · 2 pointsr/nyc

I used to be a big fan of box fans, but they can use more power than you'd (I'd) expect.

http://www.amazon.com/P3-International-P4400-Electricity-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

24/7 boxfan usage can be easily calculated. AC is more difficult since it cycles on and off. The description for the $20 kill-a-watt says that it can handle 15A. Maybe I have an older one, but mine overloads above ~900W. Not a problem for smaller ACs.

u/Dondervuist · 2 pointsr/askanelectrician

You could always pick up one of these for around $17. You plug an appliance into it and it tells you exactly how much energy that appliance is using and will even do the calculation in kilowatt-hours. There's also a fancier, newer model for around $26 that takes it a step further and allows you to enter the cost per kWh from the power company and then it returns the calculation in dollar amounts.

u/journey333 · 2 pointsr/shutupandtakemymoney

If you are at all interested in the energy consumption of appliances, you can buy (or maybe your library will loan out) a Kill-A-Watt meter. Pretty cool thing to have, IMO.

u/dav0r · 2 pointsr/technology

I used this

u/Veritas413 · 2 pointsr/techsupport

The technology behind battery backup systems is deceptively simple. It's a battery, that has a small charger/maintainer that keeps it charged when the wall power is there, and it's an inverter (like the ones you use in your car to run things that plug in the wall) when there's no wall power.
So yes, it will work, but the one you have selected is probably overkill, unless you've got the extra money to burn. Basically, you need to know two things. One is the wattage of the equipment you want to protect (You should own a Kill-a-watt, they're handy) and you need to know how long you want the device to operate.
From what I'm seeing, Dell put in a 350W power supply, so we'll use that as the base figure. (It doesn't actually use all that power all the time).
Now, with the Active PFC tech, it means that any power issues are automatically corrected by the power supply, which means you can probably use whatever type of power supply you like. Just get one that can support about 350W (or whatever you get measuring the usage of your computer and monitor), and then you just need to determine how long you want it to run. The higher the VA (Volt-Amp) or Watt rating, the longer it will power your equipment. You can get one that will run the machine for hours, or you can get a cheapie that will run it for like 5 minutes. Most have a companion software and USB cable that will allow the machine to shut itself down (or hibernate) when the battery in the UPS gets to a certain point.
Be aware that any battery backup, wether it is used or not, will lose capacity over time. Mission-critical systems should have batteries tested/replaced every year, I do workstations every 2-3.
You don't have to change the entire unit either. Usually there's an access panel where you can remove the sealed lead-acid battery inside, and you can take it to a store (I like Batteries Plus) and they'll sell you a fresh one.

FYI, I run a fairly similar system (Dell Precision T1500 (i7/LCD)) with a 500VA battery backup. It's load, when I'm just running desktop applications is ~130W, which equates to about 20 minutes of backup power on an 12V/8AH SLA Battery.

u/Jupakazoid · 2 pointsr/pcmasterrace

What else is in your system?

These are like $20 and will tell you exactly how much wattage it's pulling so you can see.

I don't see how your PSU could be too low of a capacity, unless there's something actually defective about it.

u/Patq911 · 2 pointsr/computers

Max power draw is on a sticker on your PSU, or on the box it came in. or if you're desperate look up the model and find the data sheet or website for it.

for current power draw try a Kill-a-watt.

u/TurnbullFL · 2 pointsr/electrical

If they use a standard plug, you can use a P3 P4400 Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor to determine how much power they use.

u/Fake_account27 · 2 pointsr/HomeImprovement

It should not be super hot, and I would think if something was wrong the breaker would trip before it got super hot.
Something like this would let you know how many amps its pulling and it its too much.

https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1506029338&sr=8-2&keywords=kill+a+watt

u/SpaceBucketFu · 2 pointsr/SpaceBuckets

I would be surprised if this thing pulls 75w.
It looks like it is the size of the model that is normally marketed at like 150w but is actually only 35-40w or something.
Get a Kill a Watt and report back, cadet.

edit: oh, you havnt bought it yet. Yeah. Don't buy it, go with a different seller I would say.

u/TacticalBeerCozy · 2 pointsr/buildapc

Hey i'm doing almost the same exact thing as you. If you're at all worried, get something like this - https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

and just keep an eye on it from time to time. I overclocked my 1080ti + 7700k and at high load its only hitting like 480-500watts. This isn't a big issue if your PSU is rated highly above 650

u/ZoraQ · 2 pointsr/personalfinance

Electric rates are usually tiered. The first X kilowatts will be one rate, the next Y kilowatts will be another, etc. Once you exceed the usage allocated in the first tier during the billing period, you start paying the next tier prices. Depending on the utility provider there could be multiple tiers. If the utility company has advanced metering then the charges could be based on time of use.

You'll probably be better off getting something like a kill-o-watt device that measures usage and plug the refrigerator into that. Come up with an agreed on price per kilowatt with your parents and go with that.

https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

u/Measlymonkey · 2 pointsr/applehelp

Don't listen to anyone - get the real numbers yourself.

Kill A Watt Meter

u/McFeely_Smackup · 2 pointsr/HomeImprovement

I'd suggest investing in a kill-a-watt type meter to measure your line power quality. You might have higher than normal voltage, and might be something you need to have the power company look into.

u/Northbrig · 2 pointsr/HomeServer

+1 for two different machines. Especially if your desktop has a nice video card and pulls a lot of power. Your Core2Duo machine sounds similar to my Plex server and it uses about 40W. You can get a Kill-A-Watt if you really want to measure the usage at idle and load and do the math.

u/ramennoodle · 2 pointsr/AskReddit

The first question is: if you leave the door open will the window air conditioner contribute to cooling the rest of your house, reducing load on the house air conditioner or will the house air conditioner contribute to cooling the third floor, reducing the load on the window air conditioner? The second question is: which of those two cases is the preferable one.

I think it is safe to assume that your house air conditioner is more efficient than the window model, so you'd want to leave the door open only if doing so increases the load on the house air conditioner and therefore reduces the load on the window one. The simplest way to test would be to get something like this to measure the electrical use of the window air conditioner with the door open and closed.

Also, if your house air conditioner is controlled by a programmable thermostat then it is certainly better to cool the third floor separately, because otherwise the programmable thermostat will be shifting load to the window air conditioner rather than saving energy when it tries to increase the internal temperature.

u/shymog · 2 pointsr/gamecollecting

If you really feel like being a smartass to her, you could grab one of these and plug switched-off consoles into it to measure and prove it: http://www.amazon.com/P3-International-P4400-Electricity-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1343005496&sr=8-1&keywords=kill+a+watt

u/ablaut · 2 pointsr/buildapc

You didn't mention your exact CPU. Anyway, Seasonic has a fanless PSU and the X650 is semi-fanless.

You can also get a Kill a Watt and stress test to see what your machine's limit is. I use Folding@Home, but there are other set ups such as FurMark and LinX, etc., just make sure you stress the GPU(s) and CPU. Overkill is not really a good thing, unless you know you're upgrading. Most don't need more than 650W from a PSU.

But it sounds like creating a silent PC is your larger concern. There are many options for you. You can water cool your graphics card or get an after market air cooler. You can put noise dampening material inside your case, use rubber screws to mount your mechanical drives and in other areas around your case; you can change your case fans and your CPU cooler fan(s). You can even look into passively cooling your CPU assuming it's not overclocked, but you've already paid for that pricey cooler.

Here are a couple silent PC resources that might be useful for you:

u/davidfg4 · 2 pointsr/buildapc

No. The power supply only consumes as much power as it is using, plus losses. And generally a power supply at a lower utilization is more efficient. so a 1000W PSU providing 400W is probably more efficient than a 550W PSU providing 400W.

If you are curious, I'd recommend buying a Kill-A-Watt meter, which will show you how much power your computer is using right now, as well as total power consumption since last reset.

u/newoldschool · 2 pointsr/buildapc

A pc will only use what it needs irrespective of the power supply size


Due to efficiency and conversion your power supply will draw on average 20% more than your pc needs



Your pc will be very hard pressed to even use 200 watts



But if you are concerned get a little watt meter


https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

u/Freeasabird01 · 2 pointsr/Aquariums

It’s a meter that records how much energy a product is using, both instantaneously and an average over time. You are right there is a sliding scale for energy use as my 26 gallon doesn’t use much less energy.

P3 P4400 Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_e8OQAb7B066KD

u/kundarsa · 2 pointsr/arduino

if it was me i would simply use my power meter since the wires can add resistance and increase the draw.

http://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

if i was going to control single lights with an arduino i would use a strip of neopixels.

https://www.adafruit.com/products/1506

u/lext · 2 pointsr/technology

For about $20 you can buy a Kill-a-watt meter.

u/ba12348 · 2 pointsr/DIY

Depends on the size of the battery, and how much current the electronics draw. A typical phone charger draws around 100mA, and if it's a 5 watt lamp (LED) that would draw another 250mA, give or take. Add in some inefficiency for the inverter and lets call it a total load of 500mA, or 0.5 amps, on the battery.
Battery capacity is measured in amp-hours, a 1 amp-hour battery can provide 1 amp for 1 hour, or 2 amps for half an hour, etc. etc. Amazon sells a 35 amp-hour battery, that would run my very roughly estimated load for 70 hours.

edit I forgot, you said you were in the UK, that makes my current estimates wrong, but the principle is the same, determine how much current your load draws (you can use something like a Kill a Watt to measure it), and you can figure out how long the battery will last.

u/WRipper · 2 pointsr/microgrowery

P3 P4400 Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_s0nOzbEDCNBV0

Buy this immediately. Enjoy. You won't be disappointed. The only negative I have seen so far with quantum boards is that it has 2 + and 2 - to connect the wires. I connected one set of + - in wiring and left the other empty. Anyway the 2nd unused + - cracked. It's the connector not the led lights itself. Not sure if I'm explaining it correctly.

u/parsing_trees · 2 pointsr/microgrowery

You don't need a lux meter or a wattage meter (such as a Kill-a-Watt), but they're worth getting eventually. They should only be about $20 each, and both really help with getting QB lighting dialed in. It's hard to accurately predict how canopy light levels will be impacted by going a few cm up, down, or off-center from the light, but it's easy to measure and then use that to guide plant training or light adjustments.

u/chubbysumo · 2 pointsr/HomeNetworking

>I'm horrible at determining what is needed when it comes to electricity because i'm horrible with calculations.

then don't calculate. Hook it all up, and then get a kill-a-watt to see exactly what kind of amperage its using.

>So I need enough outlets to plug into for the PDU, and I need a UPS to plug PDU into? This is where I always get confused.

a PDU is a really beefy, well made power strip. They are more expensive than a power strip usually because each outlet is wired correctly instead of the whole thing using "bars" for the contacts.

You would need a PDU with enough outlets for all the devices you have, and also rated for enough amperage overall to handle all your devices, but also won't exceed the max amperage of a single plug of your UPS. I have a Cyberpower AVRLCD 1350va unit for my rack. Its rated for a max of 815w total, but each battery plug is only rated for a max of 500w.

In my case, I have the PDU connected to a single one of the battery outlets, and it has the modem, router(Dell R210ii), switch, and AP power injector connected to it. I also have some other stuff plugged into it in case I need a monitor down there and power is out. Into the rest of the battery side, I have a Dell R210ii(main server), and 1 PSU of my dell T410. The total draw on the battery side of my UPS is just 415w on idle, and will give me about 15 minutes of battery time. The T410, and main server R210ii are both set up to shut down if they are on battery for more than 5 minutes. I have a few other things plugged into the non-battery side, but those are not critical.

The big thing is to not exceed your UPS rating overall with everything plugged in.

u/Ivorybrony · 2 pointsr/PleX
u/SoylentRox · 2 pointsr/electrical

Yes. Walk to the breaker box. Open it. Plug a light or radio into the plug in question so you can hear or see it while the breaker box is opening.

Turn off each small breaker than on again. (it's highly unlikely to be a big breaker). When the light/radio stops, you found the breaker that controls that plug.

Look at the breaker. The formula is Power = Amps Voltage. So if it's a 15 amp breaker, it's 15 120 = 1800 watts max. If it's a 20 amp breaker, it's 20 * 120 = 2400 watts max.

The washing machine will have a plate on the back of it near the plug that tells how much power it can draw max. Add that to the oil heater's power draw and you will find out if you can run both.

There is also a device you can buy, called a KillAWatt. Available here. https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

See, the power draw listed on the plate on the back of the machine is often far more power than it actually draws most of the time. With this device you can find out how much power the machine really takes.

Your oil radiator may not actually draw 1500 watts, especially if it is set to "low".

Normally, if you draw too much power, the breaker will trip and the power will turn off. A faulty breaker will not trip, though, and some breaker types tend to be faulty.

u/0intel32 · 2 pointsr/techsupport

Cheap tool to see real power draw over time:

http://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

how many cams on the PoE switches, what is their combined wattage, what is the wattage of the PoE switches and DVR.

http://www.tripplite.com/category/ups-systems/5/tab/finder


sorry, was thinking you were trying to keep a computer system going. But yeah, if you are getting 30 min now you are going to be looking a big old battery.

u/iHateMyUserName2 · 2 pointsr/nexus6
  • That charger will probably charge at 2A (b/c that's it's max rate @ 5V), which I believe is really close to it's max rate, if not the max but it's depended on the phone

  • As far as the Qi goes- I used Qi charging almost exclusively on my Nexus 5 for the whole year I had it with 0 issues with the battery, so I wouldn't worry about it (I'd leave it on all night every night)

  • Nope, cable doesn't seem to matter. I use the Monoprice Premium USB cables and it works perfectly with the 'Turbo charging'

  • Not sure about the 12W charging all being the same, I'd assume they'd all work the same because it's just changing the voltage and amperage and that's probably manipulated by the controller in the phone. So they should all be universal. Should.

  • Using a USB 2.0 cord with the Note 3 and the quickcharge, it will charge at the max rate for the micro-usb port. Reason being is that the USB 3.0 cord that the Note 3 has is obviously one side micro usb and the new usb 3.0 pins. So taking that away, you're left with whatever the micro-usb is maxed at and that's different for every phone. Now my reasoning for thinking this is if the Note 3 could charge at the same rate with just micro-usb, what would be the need for using a MicoB connector.

  • I use Current Widget. It's free, accurate, no popups, simple. That being said, software is only so good. Hardware is an easier and faster way to test (i.e. multi-meter or a Kill-a-Watt)

    EDIT: As a suggestion, why not get this charger?. It's a dual port so you can charge both phones at the same time instead of just a single port and it's cheaper.
u/the_fella · 2 pointsr/Frugal

Why do you need to heat the entire apartment with one? Does your heat not work? You might consider closing off any of the rooms you're not using and putting the space heater in the one you're using. If you're cold at night, get extra blankets and either an electric blanket or heated mattress cover. If you want to know how much electricity these things are consuming, you can use a device called a Kill a Watt to find out.

u/bigdaub · 2 pointsr/roasting

Just a little bit of heat/air loss can cause this. My Ambex was doing something similar once. Turned out of of the panels was put back on upside down and there was an 1/8" gap. Here is what I would check.

  • Double check all the dampers are closing well

  • Double check all the panels are seal and closed

  • Check and clean the impeller in the blower housing. It can get gummed up and loose air flow.

  • Roast with one of these installed You will be able to see when the heating element kicks on and if it is flaking out on you mid roast.
u/radwolf76 · 2 pointsr/talesfromtechsupport

Something like this?

u/Catsrules · 2 pointsr/htpc

There is really no way to tell until it is built. You might want to get one of these
http://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=sr_1_1?s=hi&ie=UTF8&qid=1421172715&sr=1-1&keywords=water+metter

This will be nice if you want to test other stuff in your house as well.

The CPU is rated at 10W
http://ark.intel.com/products/78867/Intel-Celeron-Processor-J1900-2M-Cache-up-to-2_42-GHz

I can't imagine the motherboard being much more then the CPU. We will say 15W to be on the safe side. So that is 25W Then if you add, a hard drive or SSD that might put on another 5W So maybe 30W, at total load. maybe 25W idle? But I am really just giving estimated guesses on all of this, I could be totally off.
Is there a reason why you want this on 24x7? I have HTPCs on each of my TVs, I have them setup to sleep after 30 minuets of inactivity. It will auto wake up when a TV shows is going to record, then auto sleep after it is done recording. It is actually a very nice feature.

If you really want a small power usage. You might want to look at something like a Rasbarry IP, or similar with an ARM processor. But you will lose the advantage of having a "real" computer and have less processing power to work with.

u/Turquoise_HexagonSun · 2 pointsr/headphones

Hook that sucker up to a Kill-a-watt. I want to see how much power it uses.

Awesome build!

u/jdorje · 2 pointsr/buildapcsales

You just demonstrated that you have saved the money difference over a 4-year period, and then some...

http://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1418031916&sr=8-1&keywords=kill+watt+meter

Highly recommended for the saving of money. Electrical bills are huge.

u/acsdog · 2 pointsr/pcmasterrace

This is the Kill-A-Watt, it allows you to see exactly how much wattage (among other things, like voltage and amperage) you are using by plugging your computer into it and plugging it into the wall (or surge protector, as you should be using). If you are constantly using 70%+ of your PSU's capacity, even idling, you have a hardware issue. It is more likely, however, that you have a faulty PSU. I would reccomending checking all of the connections in case you did something wrong while installing it. If it all looks good, RMA (return) it.

u/sk9592 · 2 pointsr/buildapc

For the most accurate answer, buy one of these:

http://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

Otherwise, estimate the approximate wattage consumed based on your parts, estimate the hours per day you use your PC, and put that info into a calculator like this:

http://www.rapidtables.com/calc/electric/electricity-calculator.htm

u/yoda17 · 2 pointsr/homestead

I searched for a log time and found sunelec.com had the cheapest prices. I lived close enough to one of their warehouses in AZ that I didn't have to pay shipping and probably saved a lot of money.

There are a lot of people (probably hundreds) near me that are off grid. I saw someone with a big wind setup that looked very professional/expensive, but I determined that it's not consistently windy enough to make it worthwhile.

Before you do anything, you really need to do a lot of research. It's not difficult, but I probably spent a few hundred hours reading and learning and also measuring how much power I used, how much I had to use (refrigerator & lights), how much I wanted (computer/internet, vacuum cleaner washing machine & dishwasher) and what luxuries I wanted (microwave, waffle iron) including usage (am I fine if I only use the washing machine during the day which reduces the amount of battery storage required). I bought a kill-o-watt meter and looked at consumption over a period of time.

I've read numerous times that the reason most people fail is due to lack of preparation and research and poor expectations.

u/TheMuffinMan91 · 2 pointsr/homelab

I keep a kill-a-watt around when I want to test how much power electronics draw. It should be accurate to at least 10% and has a max of 15A. It can measure voltage, current, power, and kwh.

I usually just plug everything into a power strip and use the kill-a-watt to measure the entire system's power consumption at once. They are pretty cheap so you can buy multiple if you need to test more than one thing at once.

u/chasw98 · 2 pointsr/GoRVing

Look into a Kill A Watt. It will read voltage and other measurements on items that plug into it. They are $20 on Amazon. I keep one plugged in to a convenient outlet in our 5th wheel so I always know the AC voltage.

u/cartermatic · 2 pointsr/Pure

The only way to know for sure is to get something like a Kill A Watt (http://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU). I have one and I think you'll be fine. I have a 4770k and a GTX 780 and haven't seen it go over 400w when gaming.

u/mithikx · 2 pointsr/buildapcsales

I would ballpark it as yes (I'm guesstimating around 750VA at full load), but keep in mind that UPS are more or less used for being able to turn your stuff off safely (e.g. tripped circuit breaker) or for outages , it will not allow you to keep your computer on throughout a full blown blackout.

Of course you can get a bit more time out of a UPS in the event of a power failure by getting a more powerful UPS but they're not cheap and we're talking maybe 30 minutes. To get more exact figures you'd need to measure power usage yourself with a usage monitor and do a bit of math.

u/etrain1 · 2 pointsr/Landlord

you may want to start with one of these.....https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1500470700&sr=8-1&keywords=wattage+meter....and see if they have the a/c running 24/7. If they do then shame on you. A properly sized unit should cool the unit to 70 degrees on the hottest day of any year. Same with heating. One way to properly size a furnace is to wait for the coldest day of the year (or close), read the gas meter and then read it again after 24 hours. If the unit stayed heated to the required standard, you can figure out what size of furnace you need. I went from a 450l btu boiler to a 300 by using this method and its been 4 years and it works great and way more efficient

u/MaresDoOrgasm · 2 pointsr/PleX

I'm measuring from the wall using one of these things.

  • Idle: ~120W
  • Plex transcoding (1-2 users): ~220W
  • Full CPU load: ~335W
  • Full CPU + GPU load: ~540W

    I actually had to underclock my GPU a little to stay within the 600W limit of the PSU, otherwise the system would reboot under heavy GPU load.
u/djbeefburger · 2 pointsr/audioengineering

You'd be able to tell from a schematic. I wouldn't guess by brand but someone more knowledgable might.

The easiest way to tell I can think of would be to use something like this -
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00009MDBU


u/EvanDaniel · 2 pointsr/MetalCasting

The kill-a-watt is handy because it's cheap, and will totalize power usage, even if you're running at varying power levels. So it would tell you how many kWh total you used across an 8 hr run, for instance, even if the coil was cycling on and off to maintain temperature. But it's a 120V thing, I don't know of a 220V / 30A capable version that's cheap.

I'd definitely invest in a temperature controller. There are a number of inexpensive units available that will control your heater coil with a solid state relay and thermocouple probe, and can do multiple set points on a schedule with a ramp rate. This sort of thing, but there's probably options that are closer to what you want and/or cheaper. The biggest savings here would be from not having the coil on 100% if you're trying to maintain a temperature lower than the max you're capable of. Good for burnout type stuff, less critical for tempering your steels.

Even at 220V x 30A, if you left the coil on the whole time, that would only be 53 kWh, or $7 per run. You can likely improve that by not running full blast and by adding some insulation.

What are you paying for propane? Propane heating value is ~ 19420 BTU/lb (net heating value). That's about 5.8 kWh equivalent, or the same as about $0.75 worth of electricity. And the propane will lose heat up the chimney (especially when the kiln is hot), so your achieved value will be worse than that, even if both electric and propane versions had equivalent insulation. So if you're paying more than about $0.50/lb (~= $2/gal), I'd guess the electric option is cheaper.

u/jscot69 · 2 pointsr/HomeImprovement

Maybe one of these??

u/crof2003 · 2 pointsr/gifs

I've used a device called "kill-a-watt". It tells you how much power is being drawn by the things plugged into it.

At $20 I'm not sure it's worth it if your only curious, but I like knowing how much per power each device in my home uses so I'm glad I got one :). https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00009MDBU

u/fureddit1 · 2 pointsr/livesound

>My question is, can I spare some outlets by using power strips to consolidate my equipment and if so, what can or cannot be run through a power strip?

Yes you can but your breaker will still break when the microwave and all your equipment is being used at the same time. One thing to keep in mind is that power strips usually have their own breaker which trips when 15 amps is being exceeded through that power strip.

One thing I suggest is to calculate how much power all your equipment is using by measuring them with a [Kill-a-Watt] (https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU) and totaling up the total wattage of all your equipment. Most household outlets are rated at 20 amps so 20 amps at 120 volts is 2400 watts. I would leave about a 200 watt headroom and not exceed 2200 watts.

Btw, you're going to have to play your equipment at your normal listening level when measuring the wattage because the power draw is going to be considerably less when the equipment is turned on but not being used.

u/gooberfaced · 2 pointsr/Advice

Get a Kill-A-Watt to determine exactly how much this will add to your monthly bill.
If it is negligible I'd let it go.
If it is high then it's reasonable to ask her to chip in a bit.

It's a fun gadget to have and can stop a lot of arguing about leaving things on all night etc.

u/jaykresge · 2 pointsr/sffpc

I'm not the person you were asking, but I'm hoping that I can provide some useful info.

> I have an EVGA 450 80+ Bronze ATX unit and a 1080ti, but no way to test wattage

Just keep in mind that not all PSUs are created equally. The reason that the SF450/600 have such a rabid following is because they can sustain a stable load at their rated wattage. The EVGA 450W Bronze units vary based on the specific model and the platform behind it (they have multiple Bronze 450W models at different price points).

Your PSU SHOULD be able to handle 450W continuous, but YMMV.

As to how to measure, a cheap and easy to use tool would be the Kill A Watt P3 4400 - https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

Just keep in mind that it measures wattage at the wall. System draw will be lower due to PSU efficiency. If you need 500W for your system and your PSU is 80% efficient, it will pull 625W from the wall. And that would be fine because it's the load that it's rated for, not what it pulls from the wall.

u/mnemosyne-0002 · 2 pointsr/KotakuInAction

Archives for the links in comments:

u/dunno_bout_that · 2 pointsr/Coffee

You can measure the power consumption with an inexpensive meter.

u/Fozman2 · 2 pointsr/hardwareswap

You can get one for under $18 on eBay

A few cents cheaper on Amazon if you don't have a current eBay bucks promo

Those are decent prices and worth it over a used one or aftermarket. I used an aftermarket to check PSU loads on mining rigs, maybe 800w max, and it fried, somehow not causing an electrical fire.

I've used one of the linked KaW's and it handles well over 1000w with no issue, barely gets warm.

u/250Coupe · 2 pointsr/DIY

You can test the outlet voltage and the hair dryers current draw with a Kill A Watt

With this information, you can determine whether it’s a voltage drop issue or an hour per day issue or if they are just getting gunky.

u/ish123 · 2 pointsr/buildapc

Simple solution: Buy a watt meter such as this one (https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=watt+meter&qid=1558464391&s=gateway&sr=8-3) You will know exactly how many kilowatt hours you are using.

u/moore77 · 2 pointsr/vandwellers

There is a link in the FAQ on the page for how to do this. If it's an AC device (plugs into a household wall), then the most accurate thing to do is buy a Kill-a-watt meter and actually measure it.

Most devices list their max power draw, either in watts or amps. If it's in watts, just plug that into the calculator. If it's in amps, we have the converter at the top of the page to get the watts. If you can't find the power listed on your device, but own the device, you can get an ammeter (like this one) and measure as it's being used.

u/kaihatsusha · 2 pointsr/raspberry_pi

Buy a Kill-A-Watt device and test your appliances.

u/rockker60 · 2 pointsr/HomeNetworking

I'm not well schooled on UPS's - In my home, 10 minutes is enough for me, historically my area's power is very reliable with the occasional outage (maybe 3-4 times in the last 15 years) lasting only a few minutes. So the UPS only has to supply power for a short time.

In your case, I would go thru a sizing exercise to determine how big a UPS you need to supply the devices you have connected to it for as long as you deem necessary. A Kill A Watt device is a good tool to determine how much your device(s) use.

Once you know your power draw and if your UPS supplies less than the specs say, maybe your battery needs replacement. If so, don't just get an ebay or Amazon special, when one of mine failed several years ago, I went to Batteries Plus and matched it (model and terminal configuration) to a name brand (Duracell) with a decent warranty.

u/deadgroundedllama · 2 pointsr/buildapc

You need a wattmeter to monitor power usage. The crash was definitely not due to lack of power. If it was, your system should have shut down.

Pretty sure you're fine on wattage, as long as you aren't running Prime95 and Furmark at the same time. Even a 6700K @ 4.5GHz & 580 Nitro+ stays <350W under gaming load.

u/Flatline2962 · 2 pointsr/instantpot

Those are 15 amp fuses it looks like. Each circuit can support 15 amps.

1000 watts divided by 110 volts equals 9 amps. So on it's own, it's fine. But go through and do that with everything on the same circuit and you'll get your total amperage draw. You'll probably be okay as long as your microwave or toaster oven or fridge or like... I dunno old school TV or vacuum cleaner isn't on the same circuit. And that's peak power, so while it's actually cooking your wattage is going to go down and only kick on periodically.

You've got around 600 watts of overhead to play with, though I would personally round it down to 500 watts just to be safe. So your toaster oven is a no go, but if you have a couple lamps on the same circuit you're fine.

If you're *really* interested in the power draw of an instant pot, buy a kill-a-watt meter from amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1542156244&sr=8-2&keywords=kill-a-watt

u/Dzov · 2 pointsr/sysadmin

Or if you can unplug the device, here's the easy way: https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

u/invenio78 · 2 pointsr/Frugal

Get a power meter. A cheap and popular one is "Kill a wat". http://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU It will tell you how many watts something is using. From this you can simply calculate the cost by watts x time x cost of kilowatt/hr in your area.

u/5ucculentChineseMeal · 2 pointsr/dubai
u/fonzielol · 2 pointsr/NoStupidQuestions

They have this on [Amazon](P3 P4400 Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_J4rQybGCNA1PE)

u/graffix01 · 2 pointsr/solar

This is basically what I have. I bought a different battery and inverter because I have an account at batteries Plus but this is a widely accepted quality battery and a decent inverter. I would recommend buying at least the battery local as shipping them is expensive.

NOTE I did not include fuses/breakers in this list but you definitely should build these into your design.

https://www.amazon.com/Renogy-Watts-Volts-Polycrystalline-Starter/dp/B00DCEKKQ0/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1487256044&sr=8-2&keywords=renogy+100w+starter+kit

https://www.amazon.com/Trojan-T27-AGM-Group-Purpose-Battery/dp/B00NY0RAW4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1487256242&sr=8-1&keywords=trojan+12volt

https://www.amazon.com/34-97-2-15-17-ENERGIZER-Inverter-charging/dp/B01N5LUMDF/ref=sr_1_16?ie=UTF8&qid=1487256346&sr=8-16&keywords=500w+inverter

Depending on what you really want to power this may be way more than you need. You really should start by figuring out the load you want to power and then design your system around that number. This is a great little tool for figuring out how much power the devices you want to power will use and it's certainly cheaper than buying too much system and finding out you could have done what you wanted with half as much as you bought.

https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1487256555&sr=8-1&keywords=killawatt

I'm certainly not an expert at solar but am learning so feel free to PM any other questions.

u/JasonHenley · 2 pointsr/techsupport

Ah, that makes sense. Then in that case, to answer your question, your newly gifted laptop will probably use more power than your last. I'm assuming your old laptop came with a 65w power adapter for charging, and your new laptop has a 200w power adapter for charging, correct? This doesn't automatically mean that the new laptop is going to be consuming 200w all the time, but it does mean that if you're low on battery and you plug it in, it will probably try to charge your battery as fast as possible, meaning it will try to pull 200w if it can, until the battery is charged and then it will pull less.

It also implies that the laptop manufacturer included a 200w power supply because it could potentially use that much when running video games, again owing to its GTX 1060 dedicated graphics. It will only pull that much when charging a less-than-full battery or when running enough CPU and/or graphics to warrant that much draw. If you're browsing the web and your battery is full, then it's not going to be pulling 200w most likely.

Also, you might be interested in purchasing a device called "Kill A Watt". It's $20 on Amazon and displays how much power you're using. You can display in volts, amps, watts, and monitor kilowatt-hour usage over time. https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

u/SirEDCaLot · 2 pointsr/homeautomation

Standby power isn't nearly as big a thing as many people think. There are a few cable boxes that keep their decoder running 24/7, but speakers/amplifier should use almost nothing in standby, streaming stick should use almost nothing period, same thing with bluetooth.

I suggest before you go too nuts with this buy a Kill-a-watt and actually test how much standby power your gadgets are using. If it's less than say 20-50 watts then you will never get your investment back in saved power costs.

1 KWh (kilo-watt-hour) of energy is the amount used by running a device that uses 1000 watts for one hour. 1 KWh is used by running a device that takes 500 watts for 2 hours, 250 watts for 4 hours, etc.
If your standby power is, say, 25 watts, then in one month (720 hours) it'll consume 18 KWh according to this calculator. Assuming your power costs 12c/KWh, that's using $2.16 every month.

Just keep that in mind before you spend $100+ on this stuff :)

u/The_Russian · 2 pointsr/buildapc

If you have a PSU thats capable of it, (my Corsair AXi is) you can get that from other. Otherwise your best bet is to go out and buy a thing that you plug to the outlet and it shows you your actual power draw. Its like 20- or 30 bucks. Something like this. But there isnt a software or mobo way to find out your exact pull as far as i know.

u/gatowman · 2 pointsr/savannah

I got a generator last year about a month before Irma hit.

First thing is first, be prepared to do the first oil change the first day you use it all day. Your manual will say that you need to do it after 5 hours. RTFM and see what oil you need, but my B&S engine takes SAE30, 10w30 or syn5w30. It only took a quart so you should get one. Any brand works.

I put my generator in my fenced in back yard, but if that were not an option to me I would have it out front and chained to something big. Plus if you hear your generator go off and everything turns off you're going to go investigate it anyway so when/if it happens, check it ASAP. It could have ran out of fuel or some dickwad is trying to liberate it from you. Even then I could still operate a pair of bolt cutters and with the help of a friend get the generator ready to roll pull all the plugs shut it off and cart it to the truck before you get to it. If someone wants to, they will steal it anyway. Just secure it with a chain and lock so you can possibly claim it on your homeowners/renters insurance.

We only ran ours during the day to keep the fridge running and our deep cycle batteries charging at first but then we got the box fans running, the home theater, cable modem, router, switch and two PCs on after a while. Rule was that we ran it until we used 5 gallons or it got dark, then we switched over to just having a fan running and the TV going at night on the batteries. This was all on a 5250W/7000W generator and a pair of deep cycle batteries.

It might also be a good idea to buy a [Kill-A-Watt}(https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU?keywords=kill-a-watt&qid=1536725406&sr=8-1&ref=sr_1_1) or similar item to get an idea of what your planned devices will draw so you can not only make sure you're not overloading your generator but not overloading your extension cables.

As for rain, we didn't have that issue last year. We also bought nearly a dozen sheets of OSB to cover the windows in case we had to evacuate for a CAT3 or above so I still have that lying around so I'd probably use that to cover the generator. Don't cover it with a tarp by itself. It might also be a good idea to not run it during the pouring rain (unless necessary) since electricity and water don't mix. If water is pooling around it, it shouldn't be running and should be moved. Those are a lot of angry pixies that would love to fuck your day up.

u/Mitten_Punch · 2 pointsr/microgrowery

Right? Seems like that should go over the driver's 179v input max. I've seen this before, with people running 4 36v COBs on HLG 185-1400s--but I don't understand the maths.

Have you checked your actual wattage with a Kill-A-Watt or something? I would think the lights just wouldn't fire if you were over max. Since they turn on, I'm sure you're good. But it might be worth making sure you are getting 250w per (plus 10 - 20w for driver inefficiency).

u/beerglar · 2 pointsr/firewater

I have the Mile Hi 8 gal, and also have a Sanke keg (uncut, just with the valve removed) and an o-ring that interfaces between the column and keg. I do stripping runs outside with the Sanke keg (usually around 12 gal), Mile Hi column, and a propane burner (just running it hot and fast), which leaves me like 4-5 gal of low wines that I later do my spirit run with in the 8 gal Mile Hi milk can with the Mile Hi electric heating element. Works really well for me.

OP, if you go with the Mile Hi heating element/controller, I highly recommend that you use some kind of load monitoring device between the controller and the power source so that you can accurately dial in the power, because the knob on the controller has a very narrow useful range. I had one of these lying around and it works great: https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

u/Eccentrica_Gallumbit · 2 pointsr/HomeImprovement

> 11.75 kWh/day - is that what’s to blame?

If it's running 24/7 then that could absolutely be it. Even at a 12 hour run time, it could be pulling an extra ~176 kW/month.

I would recommend getting one of these and plugging the humidifier into it to get a baseline for monthly usage. If that's the cause, I would look into alternatives for keeping your basement dry.

u/VayneTho · 2 pointsr/mildlyinteresting

Literally just a plug in wall meter
P3 P4400 Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_zt7CAbV1S1ASK

u/Aspirant_Fool · 2 pointsr/techsupport

It will consume power all the time, but it should be a very small amount. Higher than the powered-off computer alone, but still less than a light bulb. If you want to know exactly how much, you'd have to measure it somehow, probably with a device like this one.

u/CamelCityCalamity · 2 pointsr/vandwellers

TL;DR: You could run an Xbox One on my 40" LED TV for 4.4 hours using a 129ah 12V battery. (Assuming an 85% efficient inverter, and 112W console, and keeping the battery above 50% charge.)

----------

EDITS: I added my own real example, because I own a Kill-A-Watt, I also added a "Quick Step 3" as a good, high estimate for power usage, which is what I did for my example. I also did some math for an Xbox One using values from the internet.

Added TL;DR.

Added bit about how deep you should really cycle a battery and modified numbers.

----------------------------

Real wattage


We need to know the real wattage of your devices, under an example load.

  1. Buy a Kill-A-Watt.
  2. Plug a power strip into it.
  3. Plug things into the power strip, like a TV and Xbox and play your most graphically heavy game for at least an hour or two, and track how long you actually played.

    In step 3, the time is from powering up to powering down. The Kill-A-Watt has a timer, too, so you can just use that, but if you forget to look when you power off the devices, its timer will just keep going. Or if you didn't start playing right when you plugged the Kill-A-Watt into the wall. Take realistic breaks when playing with the console still on just like you would in real life. The goal is to simulate an actual play session and track the energy usage and time.

    The Kill-A-Watt will tell you how many kilowatt hours your devices used while plugged in and powered on. Later, we can convert this to amp hours at 12V.

    Alternate Quick Step 3


    Play a heavy game through some loading time and a graphically intense screens and keep an eye on the Kill-A-Watt in Watt mode and simply note the peak wattage. Take that wattage, multiply some nominal gaming session length in hours (like 4?). That gives you watt hours, which is what you really need. (No point in dividing by 1000 to get kWh when you're just going to multiply by 1000 in the formula.)

    300W times 4 hours = 1200 Wh = 1.2 kWh

    Batteries


    Batteries are measured in amp hours (ah). E.g.: 100 ah could theoretically power a 4 amp device for 25 hours. So we need to know the ah of your batteries and the amperage of your devices.

    IMPORTANT: The faster you discharge a battery, the smaller its real capacity. Most batteries are rated for a 20-24 hour discharge rate. For example, a 100 ah battery run down in 5 hours might only have ended up giving you 85 ah.

    Formulas


    Very easy math.

    Amps = Watts / Volts

    You can just multiply both sides with hours:

    Amp hours = Watt hours / Volts

    1 kW is 1000W, so:

    Amp hours = ( Kilowatt hours * 1000 ) / Volts

    That last one is the formula we will use.

    An example:


    Let's say the Kill-A-Watt recorded 1.2 kWh. That could be 300W for 4 hours, for example, or some other mix. (That's way too high of an estimate, as we'll see below.)

    Using the last formula from above:

    Kilowatt hours = 1.2
    Voltage = 12

    ah = 1.2 * 1000 / 12

    ah = 100

    So, if it took you 4 hours to use those 1.2 kWh, then you need a battery rated at 100 ah for a 4 hour discharge rate. That would be around a 130 ah battery. Example. I know that this battery is rated for 100 ah at a 4 hour discharge rate because there's a handy chart in the spec sheet.

    Note: this is a 75 pound battery. It's huge.

    You'd probably need an even bigger one, because any electrical system has inefficiencies. Or just play for less time. However, I highly doubt the Xbox/TV combo is actually 300W. My entire living room including my gaming PC, 60" LED TV, desk fan, and some other things is only 320W under load.

    Online calculators


    Convert kWh to ah:

    http://everydaycalculation.com/kwh-ah.php NOTE: you need to multiply the kWh by 1000 first because this page asks for Wh.

    My own real example:


    40" LED 4k TV plus a Wii U running Zelda: Windwaker

    It peaked at a mere 67 Watts! Note: that's at 25% backlight (5 out of 20). The TV itself is about 36W at that brightness. At full brightness it's 86W. Of course, the Wii U is definitely no Xbox!

    67 W * 4 hours / 1000 = 268 wH = 0.268 kWh.

    268 Wh / 12 V = 22.3 ah.

    On the 129 ah battery I linked above, I could play for maybe 21 hours. (EDIT: 20.8 according to the math at the very bottom, accounting for inverter efficiency. Not a bad guess!)

    Hypothetical Xbox One


    This article says an Xbox One is 112 W when playing games. That plus 36W from my LED TV would be 148 Watts.

    I'm getting sick of fudging numbers, so I'm going to do some real math.

    Given the spec sheet of the 129ah battery I linked above, here are the values from the spec sheet, throwing out the first and last data points to ignore the extremes, then converting amp hours to amps by dividing by the hour value, and then converting that to watts by multiplying times 12V:

    | h | ah | a | W |
    |----|-----|--------|-------|
    | 2 | 100 | 50 | 600 |
    | 4 | 103 | 25.75 | 309 |
    | 8 | 113 | 14.125 | 169.5 |
    | 24 | 129 | 5.375 | 64.5 |

    Using Wolfram Alpha, we can infer an exponential formula for watts vs hours. The reason we threw out the extremes was to allow Wolfram Alpha to better fit a curve to the data.

    That formula is 42.7061 e^(-0.00910558 x)

    Now we can just plug in values for x (in watts) and get the expected battery time!

    For 148 W, that's 11 hours.

    However, this website
    says the average inverter efficiency is 85%, so it's going to draw about 18% more power from the battery than our devices draw from the inverter. (0.85^-1 = 1.18)

    148W * 1.18 = 175W

    For the 175 W, which the inverter is actually drawing, it's 8.7 hours.

    However, I've learned that you shouldn't drain even a deep cycle battery past, say, 50% otherwise you'll really reduce it's lifetime. So cut that number in half: 4.4 hours.



u/arizona-lad · 2 pointsr/HomeImprovement

Get a UPS. Way cheaper than any other method.

As far as observing your power system, you'd want to look at an energy monitor. They start cheap, and end up expensive:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00009MDBU

https://sense.com

http://www.theenergydetective.com/tedworks

https://www.amazon.com/CURB-Energy-Monitoring-System-Solar/dp/B015IY0Z3E

u/caverunner17 · 2 pointsr/BoneAppleTea

That's literally what the product is called.

​

https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

u/Bewgs · 2 pointsr/homelab

Well first, your 470W PSU won't be running 470W 24/7. And unless you get a really great PSU, it likely won't even be able to push a full 470W anyway, at least not for long. If you want to get a more accurate estimate, get something like this and measure the power consumption at idle, then at full load (or at whatever you expect your max load to be).

My 2950 has two 750W PSUs and my R900 has two 1500W PSUs. If they were truly hitting 750W and 1500W respectively, I'd be looking at almost $350/mo.

u/Mango123456 · 2 pointsr/electrical

> Is there a a way to discern the required wattage (right?) by looking at the power adapter?

You could likely get close. I happen to have a power adapter on my desk right now that says "INPUT: 120V AC 60Hz 18W". It will probably consume less than 18W unless I risk overloading it. To find a more accurate number, you can use an inexpensive Kill-a-Watt device.

I see that the runtime of UPSes does not appear to be consistent based on the power consumption. For example this AVRG750U has a runtime of 50 minutes under a load of 50 watts, but only 17 minutes under a load of 100 watts. This device doesn't list data for load below 50 watts, so the best we can discern from this is my device will run for "more than 50 minutes".

Here is a competitor's UPS. Its manufacturer claims it will run for 99 minutes under a 30W load. The runtime for these two models is similar, although the first one I linked can handle a greater load.

There are two types of UPSes most likely in your price range: standby and line interactive. Line interactive has slightly better performance, so choose this if you can afford it.

I've used both APC and CyberPower with success.

u/mikebald · 2 pointsr/HomeImprovement

If you're curious how much power you're using through an outlet, you can purchase a killawatt: https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

u/RazorEE · 2 pointsr/Electricity

Kill-A-Watt is what you're looking for.

The problem you're having with your power meter is power factor. If you multiply volts x amps, you get apparent power in VA(volt*amps). To get watts, you need to multiply volts x watts x pf. Pf is cos(Θ) where Θ is the angle difference between the voltage and the current. Here's a good explanation.

u/Colemak34DD · 2 pointsr/buildapcsales

> (650W power supply, I would guess my system would draw about 500W at peak but not sure)

Get a kill a watt and get your actual usage. You should have a good amount of headroom but for comparison I'm running my rig and a NAS off my UPS and it's currently only outputting 105W/108VA

u/amwdrizz · 2 pointsr/techsupport

Not necessarily my desktop at home consumes ~180watts idle and upto 500watts under seen load.

This is measured through my UPS which gives me the current draw of the connected systems.

And my home machine is much more powerful than yours. So I doubt that it would use that much.

Eg: My machine at home is: mid-high end gpu (gtx770), 32gb ram, intel c7 4770k-oc'd using 1.3-1.4volts,2x24" lcd, 1x40" tv, etc.

The only thing that could make a difference by a couple of % points is having an 80% gold/plat psu. But you are only talking 1-3% change on average.

If you really want to see your power draw on it, get Kill-A-Watt Meter that will tell you in real time what your energy usage is.

u/CaptSnap · 2 pointsr/skoolies

First, You need to add up all the energy youre going to use in an average day. This is critical and no one else can really do it for you.

Theres a couple of ways to do this. You can buy a kill-a-watt meter and plug a power strip into it and then run everything you would want to run in a day off of it. This is it on amazon It will tell you how many watts everything has used.

Or you can go to a solar calculator on the web.....type in all the things you will use and what their rated wattages are. If you dont know them you can find them ..usually...on a label on the back near the power supply of each appliance. Or just google and use the larger number of their examples. Type in their wattage and how long you will use them. This too will tell you how many watts youre likely to use during a day.

Second, you need to size your solar array and your battery bank.

Lets say in your calculations you find that you use 2000w a day (2kw) that would be about 60kw a month if you want to compare it with your electric bill (which is pretty low but not unrealistic since you arent using a/c or any large appliances). For solar panels the math is pretty simple. If you get 4 hours of direct sunshine you would need 500w of solar panels to get your 2000w for the day under ideal conditions and assuming no loss. (never plan for ideal conditions and never assume zero loss but you get the idea) If you think youre going to get 8 (youre not) then you just need 250w....and so on.

You will probably never achieve this, I would shoot for 60% more solar on the bus than you think need on paper. For this example I would do my best to get 750 to 800 watts of panels. It is fair complicated and very build specific to try and calculate how much loss you will incur in your wiring and in panel placement. Since you can only have two panels the simplest and most elegant solution is to just buy panels that cover as much of the space as you have left as possible.

Panels also are never as efficient as they are the first year. If you size perfectly this year in a year or two you will be undersized.

For batteries you have to consider amp hours. Watts are amps * volts. Batteries are usually 12 v. Lets continue our example that you use 2000w a day and want to have enough reserve power to cover a full day. 2000w at 12v is 167 amps. An amp hour is one amp or one hour. We can take our 167 amps and know that you need 167 amp hours because youre using it over time. Im oversimplifying but thats the smallest amp/hour rating that will suffice. A good rule of thumb is to never drain lead acid batteries below 50% so now you need a 330 amp hours battery bank at the minimum. As an example that means you would need between 3 and 4 of these For lithium ion I think its 80% so thats 210 amp hours of lithium ion.

Your battery will never be as good as it is the first week so in a year's time neither of these banks will provide enough reserve energy if you just do the minimum required right off the bat. You will have to overbuild to account for this or add later.

If you want to work backwards then its a little less elegant. Lets say your coffee maker is 5 amps but its rated at 110 V thats 550 watts. Lets assume you use it for 15 minutes so thats ~138 watt hours. Your inverter will need to draw (138 watts divided by 12 V) about 11.5 amp hours out of your battery. If you have a 100 ah battery bank, that gives you 50 ah effective use...that 15 minutes of coffee making just used over 20 percent of your battery.

Charging your house batteries off the alternator can be very simple. This is what I used Put a switch in the cab and run a wire to the small terminal. When the small pole is energized it will connect the two larger poles. Wire one pole to one battery bank and the other pole to the other battery bank, use thick wire for the large poles 2/0. When the small pole is not energized the two poles will not be connected. When you want one bank to charge the other bank turn your switch on. When you want one bank to not drain the other bank, turn your switch off.

Im partial to this brand but you may find a cheaper one.

There are dozens of gauges that will tell you your battery voltages. Here is one example if you have everything wired correctly when you flip your switch to connect your two battery banks you should see their voltages come together.

u/nwoolls · 2 pointsr/BitcoinMining

Whether or not you can add another GPU depends on the rest of your components. I have a rig with two of those Sapphire 7950 cards in it currently and it's pulling 545 Watts, so your 700W PSU should be fine. I'd recommend picking up a Kill A Watt if you are going to be doing much mining, plus they are just pretty cool to have around.

Regarding speeds and clock-rates, I am able to get my Sapphire 7950's running at 1185 core and 200 memory with the stock 1.08 voltage and 75% fanspeed running at ~60c. This results in about 610 Mh/s using cgminer. I use Afterburner to do the overclocking as it's currently the only solution for underclocking the RAM on newer GPU's. See here and here for details on that.

u/Some-Random-Chick · 2 pointsr/hardware

get something like this and measure your intake, you'd be surprised

u/svott · 2 pointsr/volt

I plug in my Volt through a Kill-a-Watt meter. You just plug it into the receptacle and then plug the Volt charger into that. It will tell you the instantaneous power draw through an outlet and also keep track of how much electricity you're using each day/month/year. You can just multiply the monthly total kWh by your electricity cost to find out exactly what you owe the landlord.

Here's the device I am using but there is a newer model if you're willing to spend a bit more.

Kill-a-Watt P3 P4400 at Amazon

u/icebird · 2 pointsr/Frugal

Assuming a price of 0.25$ per kW/h, you're consuming about 10 kW/h a day. I don't know about your lifestyle or your situation, but I consider that to be a lot for a single person.

For example, my father and me consume about 5 kW/h a day (wood furnace, no A/C. We also have an electric stove but we don't cook that much. We do the laundry less than once a week.).

If you're interested in (possibly) saving energy and money, you can buy a kill-a-watt and monitor your appliances.

Anyway, it's funny how half the people in the world are cooling their house while the other half are heating it!

u/Damocles2010 · 2 pointsr/AskReddit

Buy one of these

http://www.amazon.com/P3-International-P4400-Electricity-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

Check each appliance you have plugged in....

u/tekmine · 2 pointsr/dogemining

I looked at each based on my findings. I have two PCs that I build/use for gaming/streaming/etc. My old PC with a GTX 750TI and my new one with a R9 290X so those power numbers are base on to the wall numbers got using a Kill a Watt meter. Also prices were what I got them for.

I will update add the Gridseed numbers from GAWMiner as well. Thanks for the input shibe.

u/Koyah · 2 pointsr/sousvide

I'm using one of these.

u/ashwinmudigonda · 2 pointsr/india

This?

Product specs look like it's meant for the US market. 115V input.

u/Jim-Jones · 2 pointsr/electricians

The only good way is a power meter like a Kill-a-Watt.

u/Lascielle · 2 pointsr/blackdesertonline

Setting up a low power plan in windows settings might help. Control Panel -> Hardware and Sound -> Power Options in Windows 10. You can tweak settings like max processor state in the plan settings too. I imagine you could set it pretty low.

If you can't see power usage on your computer, a usage meter might be really handy. Something like https://smile.amazon.com/P4400-Kill-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU/ I love my Belkin Conserve Monitor, but they're not made anymore apparently

u/ben8jam · 2 pointsr/EtherMining

Yes I used HWinfo. I don't want to burst your bubble, but just do a little reading online. Everyone agrees. $16.67 on Amazon, get one:

Kill A Watt

I used two PSUs with the GPU hooked up to a dedicated PSU that wasn't running any other perifs, then plugged that PSU into the Kill-a-watt so I knew I was measuring that GPUs actual wall draw. It's no where close to how low the software registers.

u/erlionwere · 2 pointsr/dogemining

I've undervolted MSI, Sapphire, and Gigabyte cards but not your specific one. Looks like your run at 1.256 out of the box and might not have a GPU BIOS switch? Usually you'll want to switch that over so you have a failsafe BIOS to go back to just in case flashing fails.

If it does not have a switch I think that cgminer may just detect the max voltage for the card so the change might not be apparent on the screen, but if you have a kill-a-watt meter for your plug you will be able to see the difference in the power draw from the wall after rebooting. http://www.amazon.com/P3-International-P4400-Electricity-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

There's a decent walkthrough here, although it's not specific to ASUS.
http://rumorscity.com/2013/12/09/how-to-modify-video-bios-to-undervolt-gpu-in-linux/

You will have to hack around with it or ask someone with your specific card though. Looking around online I see posts about people running with 1.084, 1.087, 1.2, 1.1 volts, so maybe start at 1.2 and work your way down?


u/ZqTvvn · 2 pointsr/homeautomation

Your home server, and any room fans / AC are going to almost certainly be your biggest consumer.

Spend the twenty bucks on one of these:

https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

Then spend a day tracking your loads. the "standby" draw of some home theater setups is also very high.

u/BrutalGoerge · 2 pointsr/pcmasterrace

I think everyone should have one of these kill-a-watt power meters https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

I have a similar system to you and under synthetics, the highest I ever saw was around 450W

u/kurk231 · 2 pointsr/TEAMEVGA

I think you should be okay. If you plug your system specs into EVGA's Power Meter it recommends 600W+ so you are probably safe since it tends to err on the safe side. If you want so see just how much your rig is pulling from the wall, you could get a something like a Kill A Watt to see if what sort of headroom you have when everything is stock.

u/decaturbob · 2 pointsr/homeowners

get a kill a watt device and start measuring all your circuit consumption...I will tell right now....your bill is so high because of the electric rates you pay are sky high

https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

u/Little-Hoot · 2 pointsr/microgrowery

Watts is simply volts time amps.

We know the breaker is 15 amps, and the voltage is 110 to 120.
BUT as /u/s0high1 pointed out, breakers run at 80% when they are used all the time (like greater than 10 minutes).

So 15 120 0.80 = 1,440 watts. Just add up your wattage, and keep everything (office and grow) on it below 1,440!

Another tidbit of advice is to know actually how many watts an item uses. You can read the tag on the item, called "name plate" watts, or get a $20 Kill-A-Watt from Amazon and see what each item is using in electricity. You might see your dehumidifier running a 310 watts normally, but spiking to 500 watts when it starts.

u/wulululululuu · 2 pointsr/buildapc

I was too curious about this, so I bought a watt meter to measure what kind of power I was using. My $1k build idles at about 90W, uses 1W when asleep, and gets up to 160-190W when playing Skyrim, only 110W or so during general browsing. For reference, running something drawing 100W nonstop for a month would cost about $9.36, assuming 13 cents/kwh.

My PSU: EVGA SuperNOVA NEX650G 80PLUS
Build uses an i5 and an R9 280X.

u/Novarat63 · 2 pointsr/cryptomining

P3 P4400 Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_YGAIAbX3GN319

u/micahjoel_dot_info · 2 pointsr/MPSelectMiniOwners

Sounds like it might be a thermal issue. Do you have a "kill-a-watt" or similar device that shows how much power an electrical device is consuming? High levels of power indicates that something's shorted or using too much energy, which gets converted to heat.

https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

If you take the side panel on the right off, you have pretty good access to the mainboard. Does anything seem unusually hot? (Don't touch--just feel for radiant heat)

u/BroForceOne · 2 pointsr/gaming

Just get something like this and instead of guessing you'd actually have real information on not just your computer but every device you have.

edit - To answer your question directly, no, it is definitely not safe to assume that. Your CPU is only one component, and it's not even the most power-hungry component. To assume your power draw based on CPU load would be a terrible assumption.

u/Syntaxvgm · 2 pointsr/xboxone

The idea that moving your console from a power strip to the wall improving it is a myth. My best guess is a full power off and restart is what's helping these console temporarily.

According to this guy here

https://www.reddit.com/r/xboxone/comments/4vtwui/xbox_one_s_power_consumption_tv_30w_gaming_50w/

the one S only draws about 50 watts while gaming, and the original 110 watts (still not much!). I'm too lazy to pull out my killawatt to verify this, but I know my wii U only uses ~35 watts when under the most demanding games, so I believe it. Game consoles are pretty power efficient. That's why MS finally decided to put the power supply inside, for once.

Now, to put 50-110 watts in perspective, that's like a bright incandescent light bulb. No idea where you live or what your hoses wiring looks like. I'm not an electrician, but I know depending on how you are setup, 1800-2400 watts be line is what you are able to get before you trip he breaker typically. This is over several plugs on one line. Sometimes a whole room is one line, sometimes half, sometimes outlets on opposing walls share it. You can see what's what on your breaker- one switch is one line.

Now, unless you are running like several space heaters or microwaves in your living room, I highly doubt you will run into any issues there. Even if you are, power strip verses no power strip will makes no difference unless what you have on the power strip is more than the power strip can handle. Thing is, even the cheapest and most dangerous surge protectors can handle ~1800 watts (120 volts 15 amps). Whether or not they'll protect your devices is is different story, but the wiring is thick enough for that. If, somehow, your power strip is affecting this in any way, you need to unplug everything and reevaluate before you kill something. That's approaching what one line from your breaker can handle, not just one plug. Anything on that circuit, likely the whole room as mentioned above, can be damaged.

But it's extremely unlikely unless you have like a hair dryer plugged into it or something or you game in your kitchen.

As for your TV, plasma was typically the highest power consumer, I saw some that took upwards of 500 watts. But I highly doubt your tv even approaches that.

This is my TV, here

https://www.vizio.com/d55ud1.html

according to the manufacturer's website, it takes 83 watts. I haven't tested it, but I would put that in the typical modern TV range.

So again, power strip does not matter unless you have bigger issues. Even people with huge gaming PCs with multiple gpus typically don't have to worry about a power strip.

If you want to know more, grab one of these

https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

finally, if you are worried about your house's wiring, get a UPS and plug your TV and consoles into the battery protection part of it and the rest in the surge protection. If it's just the xbox one and the tv, a 300 watt one can be had for under 50$. This is the situation I have, I get a lot of spikes that blow lightbulbs and stuff when it's windy, so I have all of my computers on a massive UPS.


Finally, onto the import part, your console-

The sympoms you have are the typically signs of drive failure.

Keep in mind that consoles now are basically pcs. Not basically, really they are. The one part that is subject to fail more than others is the hard drive by far. The hard drive is a spinning platter with a needle hovering micrometers above the platter just waiting to fail at any time, dipping into that platter (or platters) spinning at 5400-7200 rotations per minute. While most PC gamers run off of SSDs now because of this (and the speed) and use mechanical hard drives for mass storage, it is still much cheaper per GB for a mechanical hard drive, so it makes sense for sony ans MS to use them. The drives in the xbox one and the ps4 are laptop drives, and are kinda designed to take a beating, thankfully. But they still can fail. As can SSDs, of course, but hard drives just can fail and it's pretty common. Thankfully, this is easy to test if you have a drive dock or some way to plug it into a pc. For the ps4, you can remove it without voiding the warranty I believe. But on the xbox one, I do believe you need to rip it it open and break the warranty sticker. So if you are under warranty, I'd just send it in if possible. If not, if this happens again, you can put the drive into a USB drive dock or something and use a program to read the SMART data. It's not a perfect indication of failure or iminent failure, but I've found it to be pretty good. Nice little program for that here

http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-e.html

Worth mentioning here, but if windows prompts you to do something with the disk when you plug it in, don't. It will wipe it so it can use it.


In the case that it's failing, there's guide out there on how to upgrade the drives. I don't personally know what' s compatible, I remember like the ps3 was really screwy with sizes and whatnot, but these days a 1TB laptop hard drive can be had for $50,so it's possible to fix at a reasonable price and get a space upgrade.

Of course that's all really complicated and crap if you just want a working xbox, so there's repair shops as well.

u/mediumsize · 1 pointr/Filmmakers
u/soja92 · 1 pointr/pcmasterrace

Get a kill-a-watt meter, and check idle/load power usage: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00009MDBU/

u/panterra74055 · 1 pointr/homelab

You may also get a killawatt device off of amazon for around $20. I used that when I was having similar issues and wanting to see the watts used.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00009MDBU/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1451512605&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=killawatt&dpPl=1&dpID=41ygaCtJwVL&ref=plSrch
Edit: added amazon link

u/VenditatioDelendaEst · 1 pointr/KerbalSpaceProgram

Unlikely. Have you measured the power draw of your machine under full load, and then corrected for PSU efficiency? You'd need something like this (for some reason, I'm seeing the wrong product picture).

u/haroldp · 1 pointr/environment

These things are pretty cheap.

u/RedneckBob · 1 pointr/homelab

Might want to check electricity consumption of the 2950 vs r210. I suspect the 2950 pulls considerable more watts, even with a light setup (fewer drives, slower/low watt procs, etc).

A r210 with E3-1240 3.3Ghz, 4 UDIMMS (2G), 2x500G 7.2k SATA, 2x1G ethernet, iDRAC has the following:

u/NeptuNeo · 1 pointr/LosAngeles

One thing you can do is get an Electricity Usage Monitor and check the power usage of appliances by the kilowatt hour and make sure there is something that is not a power hog. This device also Calculates Electrical Expenses By The Day, Week, Month Or Year

u/philc79 · 1 pointr/vandwellers

The best thing to do is find out exactly how much power it uses by using a watt meter (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00009MDBU). It is certainly doable. You'd need to find out power consumption, then determine how long you intend to play a day, and do the math to determine it's daily power usage. From their you can design a battery bank that will suit your needs.

u/lost_profit · 1 pointr/legaladvice

If you really, really want to get serious, you can purchase several of these outlet usage monitors and then you can subtract your monthly usage from the total reported to the utility company. Then, if you know the square footage of your LL's place and your place, you can figure out how much power/square foot you're using compared to what the LL is using.

EDIT: Better yet, I bet there is some information from a reliable source on the Internet about "normal" power usages. So, you could compare your monthly usage to these "normal" amounts.

u/jaybuff · 1 pointr/boostedboards

A kill-a-watt and a power bill to get your price for a killwatt hour. Then do some simple math.

See http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00009MDBU

u/tokinjedi · 1 pointr/pcmasterrace

The lights staying on is something i could never figure out in all my PC years. Mobo makers like to make their own settings for crap like that. I would RMA the PSU and if it still happens try unplugging the extra stuff like the RGB strips. I never use a PSU thats less than 600w. The extra power helps with powering the accessories, USB things, and the like. You could also get a watt meter from home depot, fry's, amazon. Helps monitor power use to the PC. Launch a game and see what the watts jump to.

https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

u/NeeqOne · 1 pointr/watercooling

I have the following items for sale:

Timestamps

Item | Price | Description
---------|----------|----------
Samsung Dex Pad | $93 Shipped | Brand new and still sealed
MEAN WELL LRS-350-24 350.4W 24V 14.6A PSU | $32 Shipped | Brand new and still sealed
CORSAIR M65 Pro RGB | $46 Shipped | Brand new and still sealed
P3 P4400 Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor| $18 Shipped | Brand new. Just Tested before buying a smart switch.
Lenovo Ideapad 500s | $460 Shipped | Use this laptop only for app development. I haven't used it for months now. No scratch or anything. Comes with only charger and a wireless mouse.
Caselabs Mercury S8 Mounting Plate, Black, New | $9 shipped | NA.
Caselabs Mercury Flex-Bay Cover, Double Ventilated, New | $9.5 shipped |
Bitspower Dual / Single D5 Top Upgrade Kit 150 (Black POM Cap) | $32 shipped | Brand new, unused. It includes BP-WTZPC1-BK x 1PCS, BP-WTZACT150-CL x 1PCS, BP-DSRAP-BK x 1PCS and BP-DSBRA-MBK x 1Set.
Bitspower Mod Kit Support Bracket | $13 | Brand new.

Please reply to post before sending a PM. Local pick up is available at Buffalo Grove, 60089. Let me know if you have any questions. Moreover, prices are negotiable. Thanks for looking.

u/southhedge · 1 pointr/baltimore

Wow.....

If you're all electric (power and heating/cooling) then you should be able to get to the source of the problem pretty easy. I'd start at the meter and take daily readings.

This is also a really useful tool for drilling down on what's using the most power: killaWATT

I have a 2000sqft 4br colonial that's reasonably well insulated.... I've burned about 1.5 cords of wood, but my last three BGE bills have been far lower 180/240/215

u/BWC_semaJ · 1 pointr/buildapc

Personally I am going to try and avoid parts for his build because of not knowing exactly what he has.

You could get him zip ties, velcro strips, tool kit (just search computer tool kit on amazon), usb drive, DAC/AMP, nice router, custom mouse pad, nice pair of head phones, power supply tester, Electricity Usage Monitor, Electric Duster, Microfiber Cleaning Cloths, 99% Isopropyl Alcohol (rubbing alcohol),... I could keep on going but I think you get the idea. Hopefully when you post your build I'll come back to edit my comment.

u/eskal · 1 pointr/buildapc

To monitor your power usage, you want one of these

http://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

u/GiantPineapple · 1 pointr/Frugal

You want one of these:

http://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1425858350&sr=8-1&keywords=kill+a+watt

Electric heat is the obvious culprit, but an old fridge can use a staggering amount of electricity.

Source: electrician.

u/raygundan · 1 pointr/askscience

As others have pointed out, the rating on the power supply for things is usually an "absolute maximum," not a reflection of how much the device actually draws. These little guys are a pretty cheap way to get the real numbers, though, and it can occasionally be surprising.

u/Independent · 1 pointr/energy

For <$20 you can get a Kill a Watt and measure every 110V device in your house to see what devices are power vampires in both the on and off modes. Also, I would highly recommend plugging all electronic devices into a surge strip and simply turning off the surge strip when not in use.

u/powercow · 1 pointr/personalfinance

you can get a app that keeps track of elec.. some can read the meter.. depending on type of meter.. some you just daily put in the number on the meter.. to keep track.(mine cant be auto checked.. so I enter in the number... then i look at my bill.. i get so many kwh at one price, go over that amount the rest are charged at a higher rate... really just looking at 1 or 2 days.. and then multiple by 30 to get your total month KWH.. and then look how they charge you on the bill..like first 1500 at one rate.. etc.. and do the math)

you can then try to find what is using up all your elec.... its also easier to see if you are being charged correctly.


getting an kill-a-watt meter can help you find what is using the most elect. Things like turning down water heater, can help a fuck ton.

Also warm yourself more than your house. Yes wear more clothes inside. It helps to have an electric blanket..and turn down the heat at nice.. just heat your bed.

Close off vents for unused rooms... seal off windows.. etc.

last someone can be stealing your elec.

u/the5souls · 1 pointr/buildapc

Is there a way I can see how much actual power/watts my computer uses in total without a Kill-A-Watt?

If not, is this Kill-A-Watt on Amazon the only wattage monitor I can use? I can't seem to find any others. Nothing against them, I just want to see all my available options.

QUICK EDIT: Or any other wattage monitor things you guys recommend?

u/absolut646 · 1 pointr/litecoinmining

I have a few Kill-a-watts and I keep one plugged into each of the computers in the house to keep an eye on things.

u/rbbrdckybk · 1 pointr/litecoinmining

This is the model that I have:

http://www.amazon.com/P3-International-P4400-Electricity-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

Not sure about getting one where you're located - if you can't find a kill-a-watt, any plug-in type electricity monitor should work. I just like the kill-a-watt because it's cheap. Good luck!

u/treesaregreen · 1 pointr/computers

This is a hard question to answer seeing that there are way too many variables to calculate it. You can however use a power meter to answer this question.

u/sp00nix · 1 pointr/computers

Looks like you answered your own question, although thoes numbers seem way to low.

Look for a device called Kill a watt.

u/jfriend00 · 1 pointr/overclocking

My understanding is that the power numbers reported by tools like HWiNFO64 are calculated numbers based on voltage and current sensors. So, the power numbers are only as accurate as those sensors. Some boards have decently accurate sensors/implementations, some do not. So, there's no generic way to characterize the accuracy of the power numbers. Some are OK, some are not.

The worst offender seems to be VCore sensors that are not close enough to the CPU package and thus because of vdroop between the sensor and the CPU at high current flow (a la high CPU load), they register incorrectly how much voltage is actually going into the CPU. Include that errant voltage in a calculation of power and the power number becomes errant too.

One way people examine the total power usage of their system under heavy load is to insert a power measuring device such as the Kill A Watt between your computer's plug and the wall power socket. This will tell you how much power the whole system is using at any given moment. Though the CPU is not the only power consumer through your computer's wall plug, it is the main one and if you factor in the efficiency of your power supply under load, you can get a rough estimate for how much power the motherboard is using (the vast majority of which will be the CPU). Though this won't tell you exactly what the CPU is using all by itself, it will provide a sanity check on these other measures of the power to see if they are in the right ballpark.

u/GloriousCPU · 1 pointr/pcgaming

If you are not sure how much power your PC uses, get yourself a power monitor:

https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

And compare your usage with the total

u/Stephen1424 · 1 pointr/sysadmin

We install a UPS at the core of the network regardless of the load, they are cheap and catch most power issues.

KillAWatt measures power, frequency, and voltage. Could be that you aren't getting near 60Hz or 120V and the equipment doesn't like it.

They are ~$20, fun to play with if nothing comes of trying it.
P3 P4400 Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_2GaRCbW5G66WR

u/Zodiac____ · 1 pointr/buildapc

Hard to impossible to do. Afaik some PSUs can calculate this for you but you likely don't have one. The simplest method would be to just get something like this.

u/thorlancaster328 · 1 pointr/ebikes

https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

You can buy the Kill-a-watt meter on Amazon, it will arrive in 2 days if you have prime.

As for the multimeter trick, you'd have to splice the ammeter into the charging wire and multiply amps by hours to get amp-hours.

u/Jumpin_Joeronimo · 1 pointr/woodworking

You can get something like THIS to measure everything plugged in.

u/ARAR1 · 1 pointr/Electricity

Get a hold of an energy meter - something like this: https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=sr_1_1. This is for North America - so you need to find something equivalent for Europe.

Otherwise - just read the label on the microwave. The power output should be there. It should be close to the number you are looking for if you use the microwave on high power.

u/vacuous_comment · 1 pointr/Frugal

My local lib has Kill-a-watt devices for free loan. Pretty handy.

Also internet, DVDs, ebooks, audiobooks etc etc.

u/FuckMyLife2016 · 1 pointr/hardware

"Smart" power supplies like Corsair's RMi and AXi or the venerable Kill-a-watt meter : https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

u/matt2001 · 1 pointr/leaf

If you go to the link, there should be pictures of the setup of what I did. It is very simple:

  1. AC inverter (pure sine wave - 1000 watt minimum). I used a cheaper model to start with and had loud electronic noise on fridge and TV. I ended up getting this one.

  2. Connect positive alligator grip of inverter to the positive terminal of car 12 volt battery. Connect the negative to the main battery negative (to the side of the 12 volt battery - not the 12 volt battery).

  3. Turn car on and turn off AC fan, radio etc. Leave in park, and leave car on. Your car has a dc converter that will transfer 1500wH from the large battery to the 12 volt battery.

  4. Plug in extension chord to the inverter, turn it on and run it to your house appliances. If you want to know how much you're using, get a kila-watt-meter. I think this is useful to see how much power you are drawing - I maxed out at ~ 400w. Lower is better: I disconnected fridge briefly to run coffee machine to avoid overloading inverter.

    Be cautious. If needed, get help. I'm not recommending this for others, just explaining what I did. In other words, people have various levels of electrical knowledge and I don't want to be responsible for any untoward events.
u/adam_0 · 1 pointr/HomeServer

Yeah, you need something like a Kill A Watt to measure the actual electricity usage. Run for 10 minutes or an hour to get an energy usage rate (e.g. a = .5 KW/hr). Then you need to know how much electricity costs in your area (I use a rough guess of b = 25c/KW). Combining those numbers by multiplying gives you units of cents per hour (c = a * b = 12.5c/hr).

The problem is now we need to guess what a new server will use, let's say it uses half the electricity. For every hour you run your new server instead of the old one, you're saving about 6c/hr.

Divide the cost of a new server by this number to figure out your break-even point ($500 / $.06/hr ~= 8300 hr, approx 347 days). Meaning if you run your new server for a year straight, it will have saved you money over your old server.

u/1Davide · 1 pointr/AskElectronics

The standard way to do it is to buy a set of Kill A Watt meters.

u/wwwredditcom · 1 pointr/AskElectronics

Not a breaker but this device will tell you how much current is drawn by the printer.

Sounds like there is an issue with the power regulator inside the printer. You can try to fix it or replace it.

u/simmelianben · 1 pointr/buildapc

I've actually been googling since mentioning them and realizing I should practice what I preach. It looks like a utility isn't readily available, but here are meters out there that a few forums suggest.

Something like this can give you an idea of how much you're drawing at any time and let you plan.

Or, if you don't wanna deal with another piece of tech, just get something way more than you realistically need.

u/dougmc · 1 pointr/Austin

> My point is that I asked for the things preventing BPL from being hacked and spoofed.

I'm not really sure why you even asked for that. You claimed that the meter was probably using the cell phone network, and I pointed out that it was probably using BPL and provided some evidence. I wasn't talking about BPL being more or less secure than the cell phone network, simply saying that it probably wasn't using the cell phone network. (So grabbing the sim and abusing it for free Internet isn't going to happen either.)

(Side note: If you want to use a sim card for free access, get a Kindle 3g and pull it's sim card and modem -- that seems a much more likely method.)

All that said, while I don't know anything about the CoA system specifically, BPL is usually protected by encryption just like everything else (including the cell phone network.) As for how strong this encryption is, that depends on the specific implementation -- but it's unlikely that one person not unusually skilled in the art is going to crack it on their own.

(Now, if it's been cracked somewhere else and the crack published, that might be usable, but simply getting access to the BPL signal might be difficult.)

If the CoA was serious about letting people get access to this data, they'd create an Internet portal and provide access. So far they aren't.

Really, if somebody wants to track their own electric usage, they have a number of alternatives. The best alternatives include a sensor you put around the wires going into the house and they can measure the magnetic field generated by it and determine how much energy your house is using, and then the device sits on your network and you can poll it with whatever software you want, and usually they come with some to start with. This is going to give you a whole lot better data (with data measured every second or minute) than the CoA who may not even bother to poll their consumer electric meters more than once a month.

As for how to do it yourself, on the very low end (with few features) you can get something like this -- http://www.amazon.com/P3-International-P4400-Electricity-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU -- to measure one item. To measure your entire house with a lot more features, something like this -- http://www.powermeterstore.com/p7774/ted_5000.php

u/gittenlucky · 1 pointr/applehelp

If you have a laptop, check out Coconut Battery. My Macbook Air (i5) uses 8-10 watts with normal usage. That means 6-8 macbook airs uses the same amount of power as a standard lightbulb (60 watts). Pretty amazing when you think about it that way.

If you have a desktop, a kill-a-watt meter might be your best bet.


Macs seem to be much more efficient than the PCs my family has had (Dell and HP Desktops). I am sure there are some low power portable PCs, but I haven't been following PC ultrabooks lately.

u/ComicOzzy · 1 pointr/24hoursupport

It's hard to know how much power is being used by these devices without actually testing.

A Kill A Watt can help answer your questions more precisely, and they usually sell for around $20. If you aren't in the US, there is surely something you can find that does the same exact thing. You can figure out exactly what it costs then decide if it makes a difference to you or not.

Personally, I unplug things I don't use on a regular basis, but if I use it at least a few times a month, I'll leave it alone.

u/Ipsonred · 1 pointr/ARK

The original post indicated 5-10 players which is not the same as a turn on when you need it solution like yours. Electricity costs do wipe out any cost savings in a 24/7 operation unless someone else is paying for your electricity. Get a device like a Kill-a-watt: http://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU
and you will become much more aware of what the true cost of electricity is for different devices. High-end computers are really pretty bad for electronics devices, not that this will stop me from getting GPUs that require 600 watt+ power supplies. Servers aren't so bad because they lack a GPU typically and have no need of a monitor. But I'd imagine for ARK, it would be running at high utilization instead of idling and therefore consuming more power.

u/laplandsix · 1 pointr/techsupport

We've got a smart UPS 3000 that powers our network/voip switches and a couple of servers. The utilization on it is very low (according to the status lights on the front), and we've had occasion to drain the batteries when the power went out.

With a single server (no monitor), 20-30 PoE phones, and a cable modem we got about an hour and a half of runtime. You could realistically stretch that to 2-3 hours if you cut out the phones, and possibly more if the server is asleep. 12 hours is a LONG time though.

Maybe you could get something like this and try some experiments.

I have worked with a REALLY big UPS at my previous job - it was about the size of a home refrigerator and it was EXPENSIVE. As I recall it was 15-20 grand and took about 5 guys to move it. So they're out there, they just aint cheap.

u/Azurphax · 1 pointr/hardware

Kill-A-Watt meter

Really helpful for determining how much power your components are using individually when overclocking, but also gives you an idea of how much $$$ you are spending on keeping the thing on.

u/mdamaged · 1 pointr/buildapc

I've a evga ftw 1080 and 4670K @4.4GHz and I could get by with a good 450W (I've a 750W fwiw), I have a UPS which tells me the load, even though it might run the PSU on the warm side, that 450W will be fine with your system and a 1070, the only exception, is if you like have a bunch (8+) of mechanical harddrives, and even then you may be fine.

If you want to know for sure, buy yourself a Kilawatt they're like 20 bucks.

u/drbudro · 1 pointr/sandiego

I'm in a 1500 sq ft house with 4 people and we used to average about $350-$400 a month (we got solar at the beginning of the year and now it's around $20). In addition to the regular house appliances, there are 8 or so computers, 6 monitors, two 52" LCD TVs, one 65" rear projection TV, one video projector, 2 mini fridges, a keezer, and a partridge in a pear tree. Also, we have 3 dogs, so the AC thermostat is set to 78 all summer, so you should be able to get yours to about $150-$200 a month.

My advise is to get a kill-a-watt to find out what is racking up your kWhrs and check your bill to find out how many kWhrs you are using above your baseline allowance. Anything over 30% of your baseline is essentially twice as much per kWhr, so getting as close to that as possible really helps. I found that turning off the surge protectors to the AV equipment (or other vampire electronics) and turning down (up?) the thermostats in the mini-fridges/keezer helped the most.

u/expreshion · 1 pointr/aquaponics

http://www.amazon.com/P3-International-P4400-Electricity-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

You can use a tool like this to directly measure killowatt hours (among other useful things).

(Not a referral link)

u/voxAtrophia · 1 pointr/techsupport
u/mfcimmg · 1 pointr/TRTL

I've owned one of these for the longest. Always helps estimate power costs. https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

u/moises_327 · 1 pointr/buildapc

The best way to measure your total power draw would be to use something like this, it would tell how much power your build is drawing from the power outlet.

u/Firebird646 · 1 pointr/helpmebuildapc

Triangle is indeed positive, it shouldn't matter much because a switch doesn't get affected by the direction of current.

That said, I would start by checking if all the cables, graphics card, and ram are plugged in all the way. According to your motherboard manual, the motherboard has "EZ Debug LEDs" (pg 40 in the manual) if one of those leds light up that's the problem. If none of those light up, I would check that the powersupply is working either by using a spare powersupply to test and see if your build turns on or by using a monitoring plug like the Killawatt to see if the powersupply is drawing power from the wall. If none of that works, I would remove the graphics card and use the integrated graphics to see if its a dead card. If you have some spare sticks of ram I would try them to check for dead ram, also try the ram in the other two slots.

If it's none of that, I would assume its a dead motherboard or a dead CPU. However, your description sounds like a dead powersupply, so test that first.

u/Phearlosophy · 1 pointr/techsupport

Ah that makes sense. If you really want to check your power draw you can use something like a Kill-A-Watt to measure in real time what your computer uses. You can average it out and get an accurate representation of how much power you are using per kilowatt hour. Multiply times the cost of your energy and you see exactly how much you pay for your power on your PC.

Pretty handy device

u/TheSingularityEngine · 1 pointr/LifeProTips

Get some energy meters and take weekly logs of consumption. Multiply kWh consumed by $/kWh in your area, and split the bill accordingly each month

u/noahtmusic · 1 pointr/diysound

So, ground loop and blitter noise are two separate things. Blitter is generated by the video card and can be caused by dirty power. Ground loop is due to multiple points of ground and having stray voltage between them. Quickest way to isolate an issue would be taking a multi-meter to the outlet

Alright, checking load on a circuit! First off, you need to ID what outlets are on what circuit. Quickest way to do that is to turn off a breaker at a time and see what outlets go dead with each one. Once you know which outlets go to which breaker, you can check the sizing of the breaker. Where I've lived, the inside outlets have always been run to 15A breakers. So, let's just say it's 15A service to the circuit, and you don't want to load it beyond 80%, so 12A. Here is one of the fastest ways to see what the actual per-device usage is: kill-a-watt
Keep an eye on what in-rush amperage is, meaning, when you turn the device on, it'll peak generally higher amperage than operating load normally is. So if you had 11A of power used after power on, but the devices use 5A more of in-rush, then you'd flip your breaker if you turned them all on at the same time.

u/SoftwareArtist · 1 pointr/LightShowPi

Get a Kill-A-Watt meter and measure your amps on each channel. Keep them as much under 2 Amps as possible.

https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU/

u/Rockstonicko · 1 pointr/Amd

It may or may not be depending on which specific model of Corsair 550w PSU you have.

​

As for PSU monitoring the best method is buying a cheap digital multi meter, and reading 12v/ground from the PCI-E leads going into the GPU and seeing how far the 12v droops under load.


The next, easier but less accurate method is a kill-a-watt power meter to read wattage pulled by the system from the wall: https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

u/rylixav · 1 pointr/buildapcsales

>Use a KillAWatt wall meter to confirm if needed.

What KillAWatt would you recommend? Is a basic $20 unit like this off of Amazon accurate enough to estimate usage for PSU and UPS buying purposes?

u/cosmos7 · 1 pointr/homelab

Have you done any sort of analysis to determine power consumption? Using something like a Kill-A-Watt inline can help you do this. My bet is that R410 is the biggest individual drain.

u/Acro-LovingMotoRacer · 1 pointr/tax

https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=asc_df_B00009MDBU/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=167125429392&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=2425091523357723592&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=1021882&hvtargid=pla-306572288073&psc=1

​

Just FYI your still going to have to recapture depreciation on your home even if you don't take it, so just do the home office and take the depreciation unless you really think it will not matter. You can take your actual electrical expenses even with the home office deduction, you do not have to take a percentage unless your doing the simplified method (you sure as hell shouldn't be)

u/CyberBill · 1 pointr/HomeImprovement

I think I may be able to help give you some 'tools' to figure out what's going on....

To start off - I'm going to assume you're in the US on a fairly modern electrical system. You're going to be on a 110 volt circuit with a 15 amp breaker. It could be 20 amps, but usually it's 15.

The first tool: Amps Volts = Watts. 110V 15W = 1,650 watts <-- That's how much power your circuit should be able to draw before it trips the breaker. Not everything you plug into wall says how many amps it pulls, it will say how many watts, so now you can translate between them, and all them all up, and see how much power you are actually drawing.

If you take a look at an LED lightbulb, it will say both how much light it outputs compared to a regular incandescent light bulb (usually 60-100 watts) and it will say how much power it draws (5-20 watts). For example, I just found a 100-watt equivalent light bulb that uses 14 watts. A light bulb pulling 14 watts on a 1,650 watt circuit pulls less than 1% of the total!! You could have 118 of those light bulbs on that circuit before it trips the breaker! Now, if you had a regular incandescent that pulls 100W instead, then you could only have 16 - that's a huge difference.

Second tool: https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

Go buy one of these. You plug it into the wall, and plug whatever you want to monitor into it, and it will tell you how many watts it uses. It can monitor things over time, so you can get an average of their usage.

Lastly... coffee makers are HUGE users of electricity. They typically pull 1000 watts when heating!!! That's nearly 10 amps - 2/3 of your total capacity!! It is not at all surprising that your breaker pops when you use it along with other stuff. Usually coffee pots are plugged into circuits in the kitchen with nothing else running at the same time. Your fridge is pulling ~150 watts when it's actually running, and 0 when it's not, and it will cycle on and off during the day.

Good luck!

u/7phase · 1 pointr/electrical

Buy this (http://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU) and test your outlets. You could also just use a voltmeter and make sure your voltages are in the 100-120 VAC range. Isolate the the problem by room/circuit. That should give you a starting point for determining the root cause.

u/IrisaNolan88 · 1 pointr/techsupport

If it's bad line quality then you need a line interactive UPS a standard cheap backup ups won't help. I'd get a multi-meter and test the voltage, if you are a bit sketchy about using a basic multimeter you can get a plug in tester that will give u the same info. https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU/ $21 on amazon. This would be a good way to monitor the voltage long term.

The issue with using a UPS even if you get one that would work is that they are designed for intermittent/infrequent power outages/problems.

If the line quality is bad enough to be causing problems with the computer than nearly any UPS will not work long term. You'd need a Line Conditioner device in that case and those can cost hundreds of dollars.

u/Halvus_I · 1 pointr/Vive

>not too sure what the consensus is on reporting power draw these days.

I use a Kill-a-watt, but TDP works for rough math, thanks.

https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

u/SamstagTastatur · 1 pointr/iphone

Sounds like there may be a serious problem with either your wall outlet or mains power. Perhaps you should buy a Kill-a-Watt power meter and check the voltage and current delivered by that outlet.

u/Gh0stP1rate · 1 pointr/DIY

Invest in an electric meter (I use this one) And leave it plugged into all of your appliances for at couple days each. Write down the energy usage of each appliance. Research the energy usage of new appliances and calculate the cost savings. Anything that will pay off in fewer years than you plan to stay in this house, invest in.

Use the kilowatt meter to check every single plug in the house. Some things will surprise you - an xbox uses a lot of power even when it's off due to the transformers in the power supply unit constantly running!

Invest in "smart plugs". Use them for appliances that draw a more power when idle than necessary. Classic cases are TV's, phone chargers, kitchen appliances. Shut them off.

Is your house electrically heated? Big problem. Get rid of the electric heat entirely and replace it with gas or wood.

Replace every light bulb in your house with ultra low energy usage LED or CF bulbs. A 75 watt equivalent LED uses 13.5 watts, and a 75 watt equivalent CF uses 19 watts. Replace the most commonly used bulbs with LED's (they're pricey), and the less commonly used bulbs with CFL's. Consider getting timers to automatically turn lights off to save power.

Don't open your fridge or freezer very often. Plan out what you need and prevent "browsing".

Don't run your electric stove very often. Plan what to cook to minimize stove on time.

Is your water heater electric? Turn down the hot water temperature. Use less hot water around the house. Wash your clothes and dishes in cold water.

u/omnomanom · 1 pointr/buildapc

The system and video card draw more power when under stress. What other components do you have hooked up to your system, such as drives?

Assuming temps aren't an issue, it sounds like the problem is due to the power supply.. whether it be faulty, or just can't crank out enough juice for your components..

One handy device I recommend to see what your system is pulling (and really any heavy duty electrical device) is the kill-a-watt http://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

u/jetpackhobo · 1 pointr/LosAngeles

Before wasting your time calling LADWP (they're just going to give you advice on how to save power) do this:

  • Find the meter room. Call your landlord and ask them to open it for you.
  • Find your meter and check the reading. Bring your bill.
  • Here's how to read the meter
  • If the reading is higher than what's on your bill, then you're being overcharged. Take a picture of the meter and then another picture of the meter holding your bill next to it.
  • Call LADWP. Tell them what's up. They'll give you an email address. Send your pictures (along with the rest of your info) in an email. I also did the math for them in the email, letting them know how much the overcharge was.
  • After a few days, you'll get an adjusted bill (if you havent paid) or credit on your LADWP (if you already paid).

    This is what I did. I ended up getting over $300 credited back. Sucks that I can't get reimbursed, but at least I don't have to pay for power for a while now.

    PM me if you have any questions.

    Edit: I also bought one of these and plugged it into each of my appliances/electronics for a few days to get a good idea of what my apartment's average power consumption is.

    Oh, and if you find an unlocked meter room / you have a nice landlord, go in there and take a regular record (e.g. a picture of the meter once a week or so) to keep track of your usage for a while. The better understanding you have of your power consumption, the easier it is to know when someone (LADWP) is making a mistake.
u/SafetyMan35 · 1 pointr/askanelectrician

Hello fellow ambulance owner :-)

Do you know where the ambulance distribution panel is that distributes power to all of your lights and accessories? You will probably see the black and red power feeds coming from the vehicle main battery and alternator. That would be where you would connect your deep cycle batteries and feed from the solar controller. You will need to disconnect the vehicle main power and cap those connections off.

As for the power consumption of your laptop and gear, look at the electrical ratings for your power supply, for example, my laptop charger says it can provide 1.5A max. 1.5A x 120V= 180W max. To look at your specific gear, buy a power meter like https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU and measure the max draw under worst case conditions.

u/abhisheq · 1 pointr/RASPBERRY_PI_PROJECTS

Would you recommend getting the P3 4400 or the P3 4460?

I have read that the 4460 can retain the readings even when a device is turned off. Does this mean that I have access to those readings, or simply that they are used internally for better calculations?

I tried looking, but all I found was 0.2% accuracy. How sensitive are these things? I read that it will show me the difference of 0.1 W. Is there anything that's a little more sensitive?

Also read that the downside of the 4460 is that it has fewer buttons and hence is more difficult to get it to the setting that you need. Do you have any comments on this?

u/BladesofInsanity · 1 pointr/windows

How precisely do you know it "doesn't go over 340"? By using an online calculator for PSU wattages? One of the better ones to use is the OuterVision Power Supply Calculator. While it, and other online calculators, can give you a general idea of power draw, it's hardly the be-all, end-all when it comes to actual, real world power consumption.

Unless you've used a Kill-a-Watt, such as the P3 International P4400, the P3 International P4460, or a similar device, the best you can do is guesstimate the actual power draw, which will vary wildly in real world usage with identical parts and components, especially since no two parts will be identical or work the exact same way as another.

The only other thing I can think could be the issue, besides the PSU, is the ASUS ROG Strix 1060 6GB is technically overclocked (i.e. running outside intended specs as specified by Nvidia) at the factory, and these overclocks may be unstable. You could try using the Debug feature in the Nvidia Control Panel, which basically sets it to stock clocks, or use something like MSI Afterburner to manually underclock the GPU and see if it stabilizes.

u/boondoggie42 · 1 pointr/AdviceAnimals

The real takeaway from that article is to buy the Kill A Watt tool he's using.

u/the_real_sasquatch · 1 pointr/microgrowery
  1. yes.
  2. yes, its just a phillips head screw under that cap.
  3. Get a kill-a-watt.
u/in-cred-u-lous · 1 pointr/siacoin

The draw of your GPU will by far be higher than the rest of the system unless. Still, if the machine is dedicated to mining, you may want to disable hardware you dont need in the BIOS. You should not assume the GPU will draw the max of the PSU. 1000W is enough to power several graphics cards. The best, to make sure you get a precise estimate, is to buy a power meter like this.

Sry, I realize I made a mistake in suggestion the link on my previous post also includes power consumption estimated. It does not.

u/trackdrew · 1 pointr/buildapc

Put this (or something like it) on your <insert-holiday-here> gift list: https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU/

u/lordderplythethird · 1 pointr/DIY

It really depends on how much power what you're plugging in uses, the UPS' battery size, and the reliability of the manufacturer.

I have a 1500VA 900W CyberPower UPS I got on Black Friday for $140. I have my media server, router, and a switch plugged into it, and it's enough to keep all of that running with no power for roughly 50 minutes.

If you're seriously considering getting an UPS, I'd first buy something like the Kill a Watt. Plug a power strip into it, with all the electronics you're considering having plugged into the UPS, and see how much power they're using combined.

The general rule of thumb is to shoot for 20-25% more power on your UPS to give a buffer and time on batteries. The more battery time you want, the more power you want.

I'm averaging between 100-180W with all my gear plugged into the UPS, but it's rated for 900W with a good battery, so I get a far longer time up on batteries than I would if I had only gotten a 250W UPS. Didn't need all that extra room, but that Black Friday deal was a complete steal, and to be honest, I'm lazy as hell and hate having to restart my server and all my scripts that run on it.

u/sticky-bit · 1 pointr/vandwellers

$19 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00009MDBU/ w/ prime

Why ask online for anecdotal information when you can so cheaply directly measure your electronics yourself?

No experience with this one, but they sell it on ebay too:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FZ5XUCU



u/insufficient_funds · 1 pointr/techsupport

I feel like everyone is getting hung up on how many watts you're using in your PC.

Take your actual or max power usage (max being just over 850w based on inefficencies/loss/etc for your PSU).

850w = .85 Kilowatts (which is how power is generally billed by the power company).

Next look at your power bill, it will show your charge rate per kilowatt-hour (or kilowatts used per hour) - aka KWH.

So if your charge rate is $0.50 (50 cents) per KWH and your PC is using 850watts (or 0.85 kw) per hour, then it would cost you $0.425 (42 and a half cents) to run your PC for 1 hour.

Now clearly, your actual usage/costs are going to be different, but this is how you would calculate it.

If you are serious about finding your actual usage, buy a kill-a-watt - https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU and hook your rig to it and then use your billed rate from the power co to figure out how much it is costing you.

u/jeffAA · 1 pointr/LifeProTips

It's a fact that changing from incadescent to LED will save you energy. On something like a refrigerator it's hard to tell how much. You can't just look at your bill and say "hey, every last bit of energy i saved compared to last month is because I changed my bulbs in the fridge." I'd recommend getting one of these for proper energy comparisons.

Earlier you said no other change in behavior (in regard to your electricity bill). Do you turn on/off your bathroom/bedroom/etc lights at the exact same time all the time? Maybe a few nights you turned off the TV a little earlier. Etc etc... it all adds up. Congrats on your lower electricity bill, I feel you about the tiered rates. I charge my electric car in the garage every few nights, it hurts. (I signed up for EV usage but haven't heard back from PG&E).

u/threeflappp · 1 pointr/EtherMining

I'd buy one of these things to measure total power draw. Also I don't know why you need that much memory for the hashrate, see mine: https://0x0.pt/r/SyDv-B4Nb.png

u/Muskaos · 1 pointr/KotakuInAction

All four are you basic desktop CPU machines, and my house is all electric.

That reminds me, I need to dig out my kill-a-watt and see what the wall draw is for each of them...

u/Eleventhousand · 1 pointr/Amd
u/pilotplater · 1 pointr/electricians

As others have said, possible faulty breaker, but also you should be under 80% of the rated capacity of that circuit, so make sure that's the case.

It doesn't surprise me the breaker doesn't trip the moment you plug stuff in, they're designed to slowly trip with an overload unless it's a large spike.

Something you can easily do without an electrician is turn that breaker off, and check every appliance and electronic in the house to see if it's tripped. That'll help confirm your calculation is correct. (sounds like you may have done this already)

Also a kill a watt or similar is great for this kind of testing. You may find one of your devices themselves is drawing more than their rated power.

If this doesn't help, then the electrician is the way to go. He'll be able to analyze further, and swap breakers around etc.

u/EmbarrassedSpade · 1 pointr/HomeImprovement

Over 2000 kwh per month sounds way out of normal if you are not using electricity for heating or some huge A/C unit, even with electric stove and water heater. I got around 400 in a bit larger house, and have electric stove, water heater and air compressor running for wastewater treatment.

I know a similar case and it turned out to be a faulty/incorrectly installed water heater, that was heating up water and continuously letting it out through overflow pipe.

You could get something like this: https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU and check your appliances one by one if you want to diy.

u/umos199 · 1 pointr/pcmasterrace

I have always shut down my rig when I'm done with it. if you want to know how much power your computer uses at idle/ sleep/hibernation. you can get a power meter for around 20-30 USD from most hardware stores or Amazon. and use it to measure the total cost if it running when connected to the meter. this is about the one I use if you worry about power usage power thing


but to answer your question in detail. check this out as it is more of what you want. Power on or off at night

u/deangegrowvickers · 1 pointr/microgrowery

his driver is over 100VDC though, so that won't work. OP, here is what I use. just have to factor in the 5% or so efficiency loss, since this reads the wall wattage and not the DC wattage. https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

u/raunchyfartbomb · 1 pointr/buildapc

I had this argument with a roommate. I got myself one of these ( or exact model):

P3 P4400 Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_a294CbE12XKGE


Most allow you to program in you electricity cost, and will then show your actual monetary cost, calculated over time based on actual use. (Just leave it plugged into the wall so this device stays on, but you can unplug /turn off power strip attached to this)

u/bigd5783 · 1 pointr/buildapc

Buy a Kill A Watt and prove it to him. My rig is an I7-7700K with 64GB DDR4, Z170 mobo, 850 Watt Gold power supply and a GTX1080 and I believe it raised my bill MAYBE 7-10 bucks a month.

u/kizzle69 · 1 pointr/intel

Wait, are you relying on the senors in your mobo to tell the program how much current it is drawing and not an actual electrical meter?

Sadly, those are insanely inaccurate. Just do a quick google. There are a few that are accurate but most are complaints about it showing wrong. You need an actual meter. Either a clamp on style that will calculate the current flowing through the cable or one that actually plugs into the wall.

This is what I use. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_U_x_lij7Cb7R6H05T

Core Temp currently shows my 4.6Ghz 4790k only draws 92 watts. Yet, my meter in the wall shows my whole system drawing 240w. Take 35% away for the other system parts and it comes to 156 watts. If I do a whole system test on OCCT, with my 1080 Ti OCed, it comes to 518 watts total system draw.

u/iamasopissed · 1 pointr/canadagrows

Thanks for the info I just bought this P3 P3IP4400, Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_Guv9BbKZKNJWJ

Just wondering why id want the leds to be dimmable. And good call on the fans Ill pick some up yet aswell. Think it'll matter that I don't have a window or vent in the basement? It's a decent size basement.

u/SolidBladez · 1 pointr/buildapc

While not 100% accurate you could try buying a power meter like this or using software (HWiNFO for example) to track the power consumption of the CPU/GPU while under load.

u/hashharvest · 1 pointr/zec

There are a bunch of switches setup in different miners to see this. If you want to see exactly how much you're pulling from the wall socket, get you a wattage meter.

I use this one:
https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1498554792&sr=8-1&keywords=kill-a-watt

Gives you a bunch more data that the switches in the miners don't give, like Kw/h, amps, etc. The amps is good information so if you run multiple rigs you can calculate if you are pushing the amps of your circuit breaker switch or not.

Works great with no issues and it was cheap.

u/Hardcoldfact · 1 pointr/Connecticut

Simple math..... 1 kWh delivered costs about $0.17

1270 kWh times $0.17 / kWh = $215.9

What's hard to understand? Or you don't understand where you are using so much energy? You can find this out by buying a watt meter from Amazon or elsewhere ..
https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

With the meter you can test almost all of your electrical devices using 120v [they make 220v ones too].

I have one and use it routinely.

u/Lucasb2727 · 1 pointr/buildapc

I was planning on picking up this electricity usage monitor to see how much power my computer was drawing, when it occurred to me that I also have been wanting to buy a uninterruptible power supply as well.

Is there a UPS on the market right now that also monitors power draw?

u/GarbagePamphlet · 1 pointr/preppers

If you want to measure electricity usage you can use a watt-hour meter. Not recommending this one but as an example https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU There are other types that can be clamped around the cord. Also there are a lot of online resources which will give you estimates of average usage for devices (and some that explain how to calculate if you are inclined to do the math yourself).

> also, can I use something like 12 strip power surge protector? on the battery generator? because most of them I see have 2 outlets + 1 of the weird looking one's outlet and for my needs i need more than 2 outlet

You can as long as you don't exceed the capacity and trip the breaker / fuse. Of course the more things it powers though the sooner the battery will run down (if you don't have it connected to solar or something else to keep it charged).




u/Vizkos · 1 pointr/nvidia

You can get the same Watt measurement, directly from an outlet, using a meter: https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

Without the overhead of the Link app, which I stopped using once I saw how much of my CPU it was using consistently.

u/joshua70448 · 1 pointr/personalfinance

Using electricity during specific time periods is only cheaper if your agreement with your electric provider specifies this. Here in Houston TX we can choose our retail provider, some have contracts where electricity usage during certain times is discounted or free but they charge a higher rate overall so it's usually not worth it.

Typical tips for reducing electricity usage would include turning off any lights you don't need, turning the thermostat up, using a programmable thermostat to only cool the house when people are home, checking your doors and windows to make sure they're not leaking, stuff like that. You could also use something like a Kill A Watt to measure how much electricity various devices are using.

u/JuicedTech · 1 pointr/ebikes

For another economic + easy to use option i can recommend this wall wattmeter

https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

​

u/Duskthelost · 1 pointr/buildapc

It's not that simple because a PC draws power at a variable rate. Generally the wattage use listed for a device is at max load, not at idle or a partial load. The only way to know how much power a PC is using at any given moment is to use an inline reader like this:

https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=asc_df_B00009MDBU/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=167125429392&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=6932141283413406535&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9017029&hvtargid=pla-306572288073&psc=1

Or to buy a very high end PSU that has something like corsair link wherein a data port plugs into the mobo from the PSU.

u/bpcookson · 1 pointr/buildapc

Good advice from u/dogeatdawg but I figured a link to this would help too:

Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor

u/holycheapshit · 1 pointr/SpaceBuckets

You can use a watt meter to measure its real power. Useful for everything. Sure it will work with a cheaper UFO. Why not? If it is only 1' x 1' sqft (30cm x 30cm)? I am not entitled to tell you something like it is a full size grow where i would say "Pls, Invest in better lighting."

It is a spacebucket and you can do whatever you want from one sinlge cheap 14W china LED to something smaller from KINDled, Advanced platinum or marshydro. You want better yield? Go for more power and quality product in the end. You just wanne experiment? Try and error with this, but the risk is there for a reason too. You just want to use it for reproduction in veg, or cloning? Works fine too.

u/v3c7r0n · 1 pointr/pcmasterrace

You could do the math, or buy one of these for $20:

http://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

Plug your UPS (or power strip) into that and let it go. It will track it for you.

u/Blitzsturm · 1 pointr/pcmasterrace

850w PSU should be more than enough power especially considering the 900 series are notably more power efficient than previous cards. Get yourself a Kill-a-watt and plug your rig into it, crank up the benchmark software and see what you peek out at. I can almost promise for a single GPU it'll never got too far above 400w which is well within the efficiency curve of modern PSUs..

u/Bluechip9 · 1 pointr/vancouver

It be worthwhile to invest in a power meter or a whole-home meter (such as Vancouver's own neurio).

u/radix99 · 1 pointr/asheville

Are you using space heaters? Since you say your neighbors have "more" I assume so. Space heaters may as well be fueled directly by dollar bills. They're the most expensive way to heat a home among standard sources. There are use cases in which they make sense, i.e., if you have a 2500 sqft house and only want to heat one room, it's better to run a space heater and leave the HVAC at 60F. A heat pump will use 1/4 or 1/3 of the energy as a space heater for the same amount of heat created.

Is the water heater in a heated space? If so any waste heat is just heating the house in that case, which reduces the negative effect of a crappy old heater... at least until summer! What's the temperature set point? That can be a big factor. Is your hot water scalding hot? If so, turn it down.

How old is the refrigerator? Refrigerators are powered 24/7/365 so small differences in efficiency can add up there.

Unless you're doing tons of dishes/laundry, things like dishwashers and washer/dryers aren't a big contributor. Those machines only run a few hours a week. Energy = power X time. So even if a device pulls a lot of power, if it runs 10 minutes a week, its energy consumption is insignificant. Conversely, if something runs 24/7/365, it can consume huge amounts of energy. Pool or pond pumps are a good example of that. We have a tiny pond with a moderate pump. If we ran the pump (~250W) 24/7 it would cost $22/month. Just for a pond pump!

As an analogy, consider vehicle gas mileage. The difference between 25 mpg and 30 mpg is giantif you're driving 200 miles per day for your commute. But if you drive 2 miles a week it really doesn't matter if you buy a giant SUV that gets 8 mpg or a tiny car that gets 35 mpg. Either way you're not driving enough to pay a significant amount for gas.

As somebody else mentioned, you can buy a Kill-A-Watt (https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU) to test anything with a plug. You setup the Kill-A-Watt with your energy cost (12c/kWh), plug the device into it, then it into the wall. Use your device normally for a week or so and it will tell you how much the device costs per day/week/month/year. This can really help you to understand what's going on. But, as mentioned, it only works with stuff plugged into a normal wall outlet, so if you suspect your water heater, HVAC, etc., it's not helpful for those.

u/deebeaux · 1 pointr/pcmasterrace

The 80% number is closer to reality for continuous running load. All of those "max" ratings you see on your electronics are not what your typical continuous load is at. If you want to get a better idea of what things are actually drawing, pickup a Kill-A-Watt for about $20 and do some snooping on your devices. You'll likely find that you're running well below the rated numbers are. It's a worthwhile $20 investment. You can use it all around the house to find out what things are drawing in this "there is no off" age of electronics.

EDIT: Grammar

u/freakydrew · 1 pointr/roasting

something like this and this

dumb question, would the kill-a-watt plug into the variac with the behmor plugged into the kill-a-watt? or behmor to variac to kill-a-watt to wall socket? (the latter does not make sense to me, but I am not a smart man)

u/PinkyThePig · 1 pointr/linuxquestions

two things.

  1. Those power requirements are wayyy over blown. Get a kill-a-watt from amazon to see more realistic power draw. http://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

  2. I have successfully used the pi in the past for server related things. I hosted a mumble server for ~5 months with never a real issue. I am also planning to host a test website on one currently too. Only gotcha is make sure you buy a class 10 card. I did a class 4 card initially on mumble and it would take several seconds for people to change channels.
u/moYouKnow · 1 pointr/birdcharger

https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

This is the one I use. You want to measure the Kilowatt Hours (KWH). I found it consumed a bit under 0.5 kwh to charge a bird from zero and the electric company in my area charges about 10 cent per kwh so that is less than 5 cents per charge.

u/wintersdark · 1 pointr/HomeServer

Grab a killawatt meter, and find out. They're cheap on ebay, and super-useful for everything.

The upside is that you can use it with any equipment you have, or multiple things if you plug a powerbar into it.

Takes all the uncertainty out of the equation. See: https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1538330960&sr=8-3&keywords=killawatt+meter

u/ExPostRedemptore · 1 pointr/AmItheAsshole

YTA.

Get a monitor to understand what it costs to run it (https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU - only $20) and pay the difference in addition to your third of the bill.

u/optionsexplored · 1 pointr/vandwellers

Get something like this to measure the actual use

https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

I doubt you will use exactly the rated wattage all the time, most electronics (and many appliances) only draw what they need for their current load. This will give you an average, and it may vary by game, TV brightness setting, etc.

u/scubascratch · 1 pointr/electricvehicles

If you are ok charging from a 120 volt outlet, you could offer to buy a Kill-a-watt power meter for $20 and report your usage to the landlord or at least use it to keep track and verify what he charges you.

u/C6H12O4 · 1 pointr/ElectricalEngineering

It's not going to be running at it's rating all the time, or even most of the time. The best and cheapest way to get a good rough estimate you can work with would be to get a Kill-a-Watt and see how much it draw at idle, and how much it peaks, and you can extrapolate your avg power and energy from there. If you could find something with a graphing feature that would be ideal, but I don't know any off hand.

u/millelacsmojo · 1 pointr/smoking

Yes and no.. First of all, the hopper comes painted inside. The paint isn't heat proof (good job Masterbuilt) so it curdles and chunks up on the inside. Burn the paint out with a torch and scrub it clean with a scouring pad. This helps A LOT. Keep it clean by scraping and scouring after that. Second, the element burns a little too hot and causes it to burn up the hopper instead of it falling down. Get one of these.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_VlQLAb896R87F
You'll see the element pulls about 150 watts. If you hook it up inline with a dimmer switch, you can turn it down to about 75 watts. It will burn perfectly, make thin blue smoke, and not jam at that heat level. Just start it at full power and turn it down to 75 watts once it's going. I can get 7+ hours of nice smoke that way.
Edit: Don't use pellets in it!!! They get WAY too hot in there!

u/SDH500 · 1 pointr/Edmonton

Kill-A-Watt meter 30 buck for everything you need to measure that.

u/shadowofashadow · 1 pointr/gpumining

Yeah, parents suck sometimes. They think because they have authority they know what is right but it's not true.

I'm not sure what to tell you, best you could do is probably buy something like this and get 24 hours or more of data. If they still don't believe you then I'm not sure what else you can do except find a friend's house or something. Maybe you can find someone whose parents will let you run it for a small premium on the electricity?

u/dmethvin · 1 pointr/DIY

You can get a Kill-A-Watt meter for $20 which can measure voltage, current, and wattage for 120v and has a hold feature. As far as convenience goes it seems like a better deal.

u/e42343 · 1 pointr/ZeroWaste

Try one of these to see how much electricity it's using.

u/Not_A_Red_Stapler · 1 pointr/BuyItForLife
u/napkin_man · 1 pointr/WaltonchainMining

I'm in the US, but I bought a device called Kill-A-Watt. It can measure exactly how much electricity an outlet is consuming once it's plugged in.

 

https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

u/Ksevio · 1 pointr/amazonecho

You should pick up one of these: https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

Handy for measuring a lot of appliances

u/average_dota · 1 pointr/blackdesertonline

If you are convinced it is a power draw issue, you can do a couple things:

  1. Replace PSU with something more efficient. I see yours is a 850w bronze unit. Power supplies operate at the highest efficiency (meaning the power it draws from the wall is closest to what the PC is actually using) around 50% load, so you want to figure out your system power under load, multiply that by 2ish and target that range. Lower if you want better efficiency at idle. This will be a very small change in overall power usage though, so I probably shouldn't have put this as #1.

    To give a numeric example (assuming a bronze vs a gold 800w power supply with a system under 400w load), a bronze PSU might pull 470 watts from the wall while a gold draws 444w, a difference of 26 watts. Not much, but not nothing either. Better power supplies are often more efficient below the 50% range as well.

  2. Replace lights with LEDs. You should do this anyways because they last forever, don't get very hot and draw next to no power. Also get in the habit of turning lights off when not in use if you don't already.

  3. Self-audit other sources of power usage in your home. Maybe get a power-meter like one of these. Find out what is using too much power at idle and get in the habit of turning it off.
u/sylvan · 1 pointr/povertyfinance

Some power companies and other organizations may give you a rebate for your used fridge: https://www.consumersenergy.com/residential/save-money-and-energy/rebates/appliance-recycling

Check your power company's site for rebates/incentives on new ones as well.

There's a cheap device that can measure how much power your appliances actually use: https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU/

Modern fridges are quite energy-efficient compared to older ones, so you should see savings related to your electricity cost.

u/spacemonkey12015 · 1 pointr/mead

I would re-think the fermentation fridge. People think they are expensive to run, but I've clocked mineand it's something like $3-$4 per month (small 'kegerator' sized one). This is totally worth it for me, ymmv.

Rmember, you get an energy-star certified fridge (free of craigslist if possible), then it is only on *some* of the time, and only cooling to 62 degrees or whatever you set it to instead of 35 - it does not cost as much as a normal 2nd fridge that is cooling way lower all the time. I believe Chest Freezers are even cheaper to run as they have better insulation (and lose less cold air when opening from the top instead of the side).

u/RolandMT32 · 1 pointr/buildapc

There are electricity monitors like this one, which you can plug into a power outlet and then plug your computer (or whatever) into it, and it will show you the electricity usage of what's plugged into it, as long as it has been plugged into the wall.

u/nyrb001 · 1 pointr/electricians

You can buy a plug-in power meter which will show you the actual draw of your equipment. Something like this:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_ZOKgDb4DAWX19

You're probably only using a couple of amps most of the time unless you have a really crazy rig. Easier to make decisions about what you need when you have actual data.

u/sparkman1 · 1 pointr/homeautomation

If you don't have a HA system, you could just use one of these: https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

u/Chefalton · 1 pointr/techsupport

I like to use a Kill A Watt to calculate my power draw/costs.

u/Cy-Gor · 1 pointr/homelab

I like having an individual one for each system that way i can monitor the power draw and also give them appropriate backup time depending on my needs. If you dont know for sure how much each thing draws then pick up a kill-a-watt and use that to determine load.

https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1466698038&sr=8-1&keywords=kill+a+watt

u/random0munky · 1 pointr/oneplus

You can purchase this: https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1467741655&sr=8-1&keywords=power+meter+monitor

Which will take the guess work if an (electrical outlet USB charger) charges the device to it's max output.

u/souchyo · 1 pointr/DataHoarder

You need to know how many amps your server needs (use one of these to measure it - if you're not in USA/Canada, find a similar device for your local power system) and how long the cable will be. Get the shortest cable you need to make it work rated for more amps than the server needs.

Of course fire safety people will tell you extensions are for temporary use only.. but power whips in data centers are basically just that. It's just that for home use, people usually grab whatever is convenient and it's usually too long and not rated for the load.

u/cobramaster · 1 pointr/Frugal

You own a kill-a-watt, not a kilowatt.

u/baba_ganoush · 1 pointr/AskReddit
u/headinthered · 1 pointr/cordcutters

We bought a killawatt to see where power was being wasted and a belkin remote controlled power strip for our Home entertainment system in once we started using it it we noticed a dramatic difference in her electric bill

P3 P4400 Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_1.ZlxbW4AJVJG

Belkin 8-Outlet Conserve Switch Surge Protector with 4-Foot Cord and Remote, F7C01008q https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003P2UMNK/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_2a0lxbS7DWS9G

u/Versepelles · 1 pointr/buildapc

Watt meters are fairly cheap- here's one similar to mine. You just plug your computer into the meter and plug the meter into the wall. It can also help pinpoint high-use devices; my portable AC is monster :(

u/mikeyBikely · 1 pointr/GoRVing

You can also test all of your devices' consumption with a Kill-a-watt. It can read "realtime" load, so you can power up a device and watch it's peak watt usage.

u/cryptorchidism · 1 pointr/Frugal

I would suggest measuring the electricity consumption of your fridge. I suspect it's using less energy than you think. How many kWh is your monthly bill?

Steps to reduce the energy consumption of a fridge:

  • Clean dust off the coils/fan in the back. An old sock works well.

  • Test around the seal with a piece of paper. If it pulls out easily, replace the seal. Sometimes you can get away with just cleaning it.

  • Move the fridge away from sources of heat (sunny windows, heaters, ovens). Keep the back a couple inches from the wall for airflow.

  • You could always add insulation or other crazy stuff.

    Since you asked for refrigerator alternatives, here are a few:

  • Root cellars. If you're storing fruits and vegetables only, this can be a good bet.

  • Canning. It's possible that a friend/relative has old canning jars, and they're not expensive new. There's plenty of resources for this online, so I won't bore you.

  • Dehydrate food. Electric dehydrators are cheap but use lots of power. You can make a solar dehydrator for basically nothing. Here's another design.

  • If you live in an arid climate, a pot-in-a-pot refrigerator might get cold enough to be practical.

  • Buy/harvest just what you eat! If you have food from the garden, pick only enough for the meal. Chickens are convenient meal-size animals, (remember to can the boiled stock).

  • Sugar/acid preservation. Making jams, candying fruits, and pickling are all effective at preventing spoilage.
u/econleech · 1 pointr/nyc

Get one of this and find out how much electricity your appliances are using. I recently replaced my old refrigerator with a new one and saved about $10 a month. Your bill is high, but no so high that it couldn't be accounted for if you have old appliance or energy hogging light bulbs.

u/Shark_Kicker · 1 pointr/buildapc

> You can't just declare that all PSUs operate most efficiently at 50% load.

I just did! :P

Fine, you're right. I really don't care about this guy's electricity bill enough to keep arguing. I was trying to help. I'd highly recommend you all invest in a Kill-A-Watt device and experiment on your own like I did. You'll be enlightened.

u/LOLLOLOOLOL · 1 pointr/worldnews

Do they have a kill-a-watt but for data over Ethernet?

u/bobo-5 · 1 pointr/HomeServer

Not sure how much power your specific machine uses as there are many factors including but not limited to CPU model,hard drive count,quality of power supply(don't forget to enable power saving options for CPU,hard drives,etc). Also, load makes a difference too.

You can check your power consumption by getting a power meter such as a Kill-a-watt .

u/Rehef · 1 pointr/buildapc

Yes. People on this subreddit tend to overestimate the amount of power (and consequently recommend much higher output PSUs). I have a Kill-a-watt and my computer (exact same setup) pulls about 290-300 watts max while at 100% GPU load (running Furmark).

u/truegrit · 1 pointr/litecoinmining

Watts = Volts x Current (Amps)

900W = 110V x Amps

900W / 110V = ~8A

8A x 2 Miners = ~16A Total

16A < 20A

Should be fine, as long as there's nothing else on this circuit with the miners. If you are in a newer structure, the wires in the walls and outlet should be rated for 20A, especially if it was wired to 20A breaker. You can get one of these Kill-A-Watt electricity usage monitor if you want to keep an eye on it. It would just plug into the outlet before the surge protector.

u/PsychoBoyBlue · 1 pointr/3Dprinting

Yes I do, I bill it as printer depreciation. (Price of the Printer($) + Anticipated price to service the printer over its life($) + price of modifications that improve print quality($)) / (Estimated Service Life of Printer(hours)).

Example: (all prices in USD)

Printer costs $500

Expected to cost $100 to service it during its life

Spent $150 on upgrades and 2 hours to install them, so $190 on upgrades+time spent

Expected to last for 5,000 hours

($500 + $100 + $190) / 5000 = $0.158/hour of printing.




I charge for filament, electricity, printer depreciation, preparation, post-processing, and misc supplies.

Printer Depreciation - Depends on the printer. How long is the printer expected to last? 1000 hours? 10,000 hours? How much do you expect to pay to service the printer over its life time? How much does the printer cost to buy new? If you've done modifications to improve print quality, how much does it cost with the modifications added and the time you spent to do the modifications?

Filament - easy to calculate. Have a scale and weigh the print before any post-processing get a more accurate estimate of material use. Then solve the cross product for Y: $/kg X Y/{print weight}

Electricity - plug the printer into a Kill A Watt easy enough. Otherwise you can just calculate the KWh/h of the machine, but that will not be accurate due to the increased amount of power used when initially heating up.

Preparation - charging for manual time spent to start the print. If the stl is the customer's I charge an hourly rate (minimum one hour) to fix or prepare it if necessary. If the model is my own unique design I will charge slightly higher for a return on the time spent to design it. If the model is someone else's I will add a charge for royalties to pay the designer. Don't make a shop selling other people's models without their permission. Pay them for royalties even if they don't request it if you want to build connections (even just 1% per sale can make a difference)

Post-Processing - charging for manual time to finish the print, unless the customer specifies otherwise. Essentially it is the time spent removing supports, sanding, polishing, priming, painting, sealing, etc.

Misc supplies - did you use a special build plate? charge for depreciation. did you use 1/1000th of a glue stick/hairspray etc? charge for material cost. If there was post processing, charge for any material used and tool depreciation.

Example:

Lets use the depreciation cost from above for a 1 hour print that used 100g of filament ($20/kg). Lets also assume I am charging $20/h for my personal time, which is about 170% the minimum wage where I live. 120-150% will let you price things more competitively.

Depreciation ($0.158) + Filament ($2) + Energy (0.15 KWh at $0.12/KWh = $0.018) + Preparation (assume 10 minutes to load file and start print = $3.33) + Post-Processing (assume 5 minutes to remove and 20 minutes of sanding/polishing = $8.33) + Misc supplies (sand paper wear $0.10, tool wear $0.10, PEI sheet printing surface wear $0.05)

0.158+2+0.018+3.33+8.33+0.10+0.10+0.05= 14.086 round to $14.09 then factor in how long it takes you to package it and get it shipped. If you want to bring the price down, only lower the cost of your personal time. The rest of the costs are to keep your prints going and your materials and tools in good condition/supply.

u/ohheyheyCMYK · 1 pointr/vandwellers

My 60" LED TV uses slightly less power than a 60W light bulb. Assuming yours is smaller, shouldn't be a big deal.

If you can't find how much juice it pulls in the original literature, you can buy (or rent) a kill-a-watt device that will tell you.

u/Milestailsprowe · 1 pointr/pcgaming

Like others said it cant be much more then $30 or so month. Its summer so ACs are on, Also you do have other devices in the house.

Get a Killawatt

https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

For a more accurate measure

u/TheBloodEagleX · 1 pointr/hardware

You can test this out on yourself and friends by buying a meter like this, so it helps get a more accurate estimate.

u/cenobyte40k · 1 pointr/homestead

My guess is that you are looking at a much higher surge at startup. Get a kill-o-watt (Link below) and run your washer through it. Then check the actually power use and max load etc. I bet it pulls 2500watts for the first .5 seconds or so and then drops to something much more reasonable.


http://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1406314887&sr=8-2&keywords=kill-o-watt

u/Torisen · 1 pointr/smarthome

You can use one of THESE at the outlet to see exactly what your amperage draw is, but a bunch of small devices like that are probably well safe.

As for the point above, the cabling to each device only needs to be safe for that device's load, and everytime you join more they combine, so as long as everything from your powerpoint to your electrical mains is 10A, and your extension cord is enough for fan + Google, you'll be fine. Every piece needs to support the total draw of everything "downstream" from it.

u/EZ-PEAS · 1 pointr/askscience

> A quick Google search doesn't seem to show anything on the market that could provide an 'active load' reading

Inexpensive home energy monitors exist, though they're not integrated into the power distribution system the way you describe. You can get the brand-name model for $20 on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

If you have a problem with breakers tripping you can use one of these to measure the actual load of appliances on the circuit and figure out how to re-reoute or re-wire things to keep your total demand low.

u/machinehead933 · 1 pointr/buildapc
u/taylor_joe · 1 pointr/pcmasterrace

Just buy a Kill-A-Watt meter. It will answer all your questions and then a few you didn't even ask, 10/10 would recommend.

Power usage can depend on your usage of other appliances, the efficiency of the old PC, the usage of your new PC (as in, sleeping more than your old one) and many other factors. You can conduct your own testing using a Kill-A-Watt and get the hard answers.

u/Lock142815 · 1 pointr/HomeImprovement

I have an actual meter on it and I've gotten my power bill. Believe me it consumes 1200-1300 watts 24/7 all graphics card running OCed. The heavy duty extension cord I'm using is warm.

But you're saying the same thing someone has said, I might need a sub panel. Thank you for your advice. For now I might just ask them to do 3 20 amp breakers but my end of the year plan is to have 6 rigs running.

u/Necoras · 1 pointr/3Dprinting

If you want to flat out win these types of arguments, go buy a Kill a Watt. Alternatively, your printer can only pull what the power supply is rated for. Other people here have done the math for you.

Realistically the most power hungry device in your home is the HVAC system. Heating and cooling are by far the most impactful part of your electric bill (obviously not exactly the case if you have gas heating, but then you just shift the cost to your gas bill).

u/convincedbutskeptic · 1 pointr/SmartThings

If it could do that, most people would return it!

Use a kill-a-watt to measure your Watts
https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1484168266&sr=8-1&keywords=kill-a-watt

My dryer consumes 700 watts while it in operation...

u/flargenhargen · 1 pointr/amazonecho
u/thegreybush · 1 pointr/Homebrewing

I have a Kill-O-Watt meter lying around. I was on a real efficiency kick last year, I was tracking usage on various different appliances in an attempt to reduce my bills.

u/Letshavefunn4 · 0 pointsr/DIY
u/Black3ird · 0 pointsr/pcgaming

Nah, don't mind them as most do "not" read the entirety of the post yet Jump to Conclusions just by looking at your title, that's all. Besides, if you dad wanted to screw you, he could have kicked you instantly instead of as you said "he didn't even make me pay it".

Everyone thinks he's expert on Power Consumption yet neither their thoughts nor online Consumption Calculator can match the Real Life consumption yet an estimation. Years ago, when living single and had 2 laptops "always open" for tasks and server stuff, had to pay twice for Electricity for any household with estimated inhold of 4 persons because the techno gadgets (UPS, Router +++) being always online consumes a lot than anyone wants to believe.

Only sane thing your previous replier said was;
>there are measurement devices you put between the outlet and the device

and that's exactly what you're needing right now like this (or comes in lots of forms) to solve the dilemma you're experiencing.

u/woodchuck64 · 0 pointsr/bayarea
u/dmazzoni · 0 pointsr/explainlikeimfive

Most of them use none at all.

Some of them might use a small trickle. If they're built correctly it should be negligible.

If you really want to know for sure, buy a simple power meter and measure it directly.

u/SirHerald · 0 pointsr/NoStupidQuestions

Depends on how many, how big, and how loud.

Get one of these and you can see power usage https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

u/kol13190 · 0 pointsr/techsupport

Check Here

I Google'd "Checking Power Consumption, computer"

EDIT: Use a Electricity Watt Usage Monitor.

u/FormerLurker · 0 pointsr/Physics

one of these would answer your question:
Amazon1 Amazon2

u/graffiti81 · 0 pointsr/techsupport

My rig (using Kill-A-Watt) runs between 150 and 250 watts with two monitors. When it's sleeping, it runs about 20 watts. When it's just idle it pulls about 110-120.

I also have a 650watt PS, so take that for what it's worth.

u/TheScriptKiddie · -1 pointsr/askscience

Ok, I think I have to go buy a kill-a-watt, this just doesn't fly. My electric bill hasn't increased significantly since I started leaving my PC on all day for Bitcoin mining and seeding torrents.

u/b_coin · -1 pointsr/worldnews

you're really going to ask someone who posts product links from amazon? well okay here you go

https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

u/SmokyD7 · -2 pointsr/askanelectrician

Get a kill-a-watt for the fridge and unplug the stove for a few days. There are tags on the router, tv etc that will tell you how much current they draw. All this is enough to give you a good idea of what you're actually using.