Kill-A-Watt Monitor. If you would like to know just how much electricity your household gadgets and appliances are using while they turned off as well as on, I have a Kill-A-Watt electricity monitor that you can borrow. This monitor is very easy to use. It was designed at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab. The Kill-A-Watt monitor shows you just how much every electrical device in your home costs you by the day, month, and year. You might be surprised by just how much some infrequently used electrical gadgets cost you. The Berkeley Lab estimates that between 5% and 10% of all the electricity consumed by average the U.S. home is used by energy vampires. The Department of Energy estimates that energy vampires cost American consumers $20 billion a year.
Tag Archives: electricity
Could Your Apartment Be Leaking Electricity?
The short answer is No. Every now and then, I get a phone call from a tenant complaining that his electric bill is higher than it should be because the wiring in his apartment is ‘leaking electricity.’ (Don’t laugh. I get phone calls like this fairly regularly.) I tell people who talk this way that electricity doesn’t work that way. Electricity cannot ooze out of the wiring in your walls. I suppose that some people think about electricity the same way they do about other 2 major utilities that come into their homes: natural gas and water. A sudden spike in your gas or water bill could be due to a leaky pipe. (That usually isn’t the reason, but it could be.) However, electricity doesn’t ‘leak.’ The sheathing around electrical wiring isn’t there to prevent the electricity from escaping. Electrical wire sheathing is to prevent short circuiting, electric shock, and fires. If your electric bill seems suspiciously high, the first thing to do is analyze your PG&E bill. Pacific Gas & Electric bills combine gas and electric charges together on one statement. If your PG&E bill has suddenly gone up, you first need to figure out whether it is due to an increase in your gas or electricity usage or the rate. If you have gas heat in your home, a big change in your PG&E bill is usually due to increased gas use for heating in winter.