Seven Ways to Cut Your Electric Bill: Grace Aquino

Tag: Solars Panel

As gas prices rise and global warming becomes an increasing threat, conserving energy has never been more important. These energy-saving products can help you cut costs and decrease your impact on the environment. Every little bit counts.

Kill A Watt

Standby power, also called phantom load, vampire power or leaking electricity, is the power consumed by devices while they're in standby mode or switched off.

Like most people, my fiancé and I keep our household appliances, electronics and office equipment plugged in all day. To gauge how much standby power each of them consumes, and how much it's costing us, I used Kill A Watt EZ from New York-based P3 International Corp.

I plugged the almost brick-sized Kill A Watt EZ into a wall outlet, then plugged our microwave oven into the power socket on the box. The Kill A Watt's monochrome LCD showed that the 13- year-old microwave uses a nominal 4 watts in standby mode and to power the tiny clock on the front. The power strip feeding our digital video recorder and plasma TV was a different story, showing a substantial 70 watts on standby.

According to the Kill A Watt EZ, the microwave costs about 33 cents a month or $4.06 per year, to stay plugged in, while the DVR and TV together run about $5.59 a month, or $68.08 per year. The device is a great tool for determining what should be unplugged to save energy.