I discovered (thanks to the “Green Team” at work) that the Ottawa Public Library system lends out “Kill-a-watt” power meters, something I’ve always wanted to try. So I excitedly booked one out last week and went about measuring everything in the house.

Even though I had a pretty accurate sense of what to expect for most things, I was pleasantly surprised by a lot of the “trickle charge” devices in the apartment. I’ve been hearing all kinds of horror stories about how the little blue lights on your DVD player are patiently sucking hundreds of watts out of the wall even while they’re off – but that wasn’t the case at all. In fact, nearly all of my “ambient” devices (including the sleeping computer monitor and telephone chargers) use so little energy it barely registered, even after hours of use.

The one thing I -will- unplug from the wall for now on is my laptop, which periodically goes from nothing to 30w every few minutes, probably cycling the battery so it keeps a charge. I use it enough that battery wear-down shouldn’t be an issue.

Each of the branches have 10 or so of the little devices – definitely worth taking out if you’re curious about where the numbers are coming from on your hydro meter.

Kill-a-watt