I was looking for a book and three white cardboard boxes caught my eye. It was just white cardboard boxes with a catalog number on it. What the heck are these, I thought. I pulled one of the boxes off the shelf, and the front has the name and a picture of the device.
I thought WTF, opened the box, and whoa, it is really an electricity meter inside. It's mine for three weeks.
The meter was at Dewey Decimal 333 which I believe is social sciences.
Edit: Slightly disappointed. It is a very dumbed down version of Kill-a-watt type meter. The only metric it gives is instantaneous watts. It can then calculate the cost and CO2 for 30 days and 365 days but those are based on instantaneous watts. A Kill-a-watt meter can stay plugged in and count cumulative energy use which is more useful.
For example instantaneous power use of a refrigerator is not useful because the motor is not running most of the time. A Kill-a-watt could stay plugged in for a week and count the total kwh for the week. Then you could project energy used out to 4 weeks or 52 weeks.
The instantaneous watts on my 4 port USB charger constantly fluctuates 1-7 watts with a phone and small android tablet plugged in. The cost and CO2 changes with the watts too...
This device is mostly useful to see energy use for things that use constant power like a lamp or find things that use a lot of power when "off".
Edit 2: Found the manual, it was not included, and the meter needs to be plugged in for at least 45 minutes to show averaged cost and CO2. Still does not show kwh. The first 45 minutes only shows instantaneous numbers. That...that is not intuitive. I am less disappointed now.
November 17, 2018 at 02:51PM
