Kill-a-Watt

I finally got to verify the myth about our LCD monitors and their so-called power savings mode. I went out and got myself a Kill-A-Watt, a little measuring device to plug between your energy consumer and the socket. It shows you exactly how much wattage is consumed at any time and over a period of time. Very neat.


Now to the test. If I leave my DELL monitor on over night so that it shows me the little colorful screensaver icon, it actually draws roughly 40 Watts, like a lightbulb. If you do this all night, it consumes 0.550 KwH - for nothing. Takes this times 30 days times 200 employees and we are wasting roughly 3000 KwH just on that.

This does not only have financial cost to it, but a measurable environmental impact as well.

Also, I could confirm the using www.bkackle.com over www.google.com saves about 3 Watts. Crazy, but actually true what they claim (see prior post).

So, go out, get a Kill-A-Watt and kill a watt!!!

And please remember to completely turn off all unused appliances, especially monitors.