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The Kill-A-Watt Meter Plug
it into the outlet and plug an appliance into the meter.
It will tell you how many kilowatt hours the appliance
uses. Calculate
the KWH usage for a year and multiply by your cost of
electricity to find out what it costs to operate that
appliance. The
savings may enable you to buy a new, more energy efficient
appliance. Example: 10 year old Kenmore 19 cubic foot refrigerator with icemaker uses 1194 kwh per year. At 14.675 cents per kwh, that’s $175 per year. A new Kenmore 18.8 cubic foot refrigerator with icemaker costs $719, uses 417 kwh per year and costs $61 to operate. The energy savings of $114 per year enable the new refrigerator to pay for itself in energy savings in 6.3 years. That’s a 15.9% return on investment, better than anything available in the market at this time. On economic grounds alone, the change is a sensible one. Add in the decreased impact on the environment and the change is even more reasonable. Example: 22 year old upright manual defrost 16 cubic foot freezer uses 898 kwh per year and costs $132 to operate. A new Kenmore 14.8 cubic foot chest freezer costs $269.99 and uses 397 kwh per year at an energy cost of $58. At $74 per year savings in electricity it will pay for itself in less than 4 years, or produce an investment return of over 25%. The Ecology Mission Group at Central Baptist Church in Wayne, PA www.cbcwayne.org has purchased two Kill-A-Watt meters which are available for use by church members to check their home appliances.
The
Cost of My Electricity
To
figure the cost of your electricity you need your electric
bill. One
way is to take the total kilowatt hours (kwh) you use in a
month and divide the total amount you pay by that figure. That will give you an actual cost
per kwh for that month.
If you subtract from the total the amount that the
delivery of service costs each month and use that figure, you
can get an actual ongoing cost. For example, PECO charges $5.10 per month customer charge and Green Mountain Energy charges $3.95 per month service charge. These amounts are paid every month in addition to the charges for the amount of electricity used. The cost of electricity used in the examples for the Kill-A-Watt meter, 14.675 cents per kwh, is based on the 100% renewable Nature’s Choice Option of Green Mountain and subtracting the fixed costs of service. The costs shown in the comparison chart below do not include the distribution and transition charges from PECO or the state tax adjustment.
This chart is only an example from PowerScorecard. For up-to-date figures and options you must log on to the site http://www.powerscorecard.org The energy we use is like taking water from a reservoir. The cleaner the streams putting water into the reservoir are, the cleaner the water we take out. The energy grid works like that. The actual energy delivered to our house is from the grid (unless we generate our own through solar panels). If we buy clean power from a source like Green Mountain or Community Energy, it increases the amount of clean power that’s put into the grid. The cleaner the power we use, the more we become responsible stewards of creation.
The
Kill-a-Watt meter is available in Radio Shack stores for $49.99
or at the Supermediastore http://store.yahoo.com/supermediastore/kilwateldet1.html
for $39.99.
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