Holding the Kill A Watt monitor in my hand, I felt a deep-seated resistance. Check my appliances for energy consumption? Really?



What if my coffee maker is a monster energy suck? I'm not about to live without it so do I need the guilt? Same for that iPod docking station. And my digital bedroom clock. And my phone charger. And my desktop computer, printer and landline. And my laptop. And that digital photo frame on the living room table.



I mean, this is just life in the 21st century. It was one of those days when I was too tired to care.



Still, Energy Trust of Oregon started a program through which library patrons can check out Kill A Watt monitors and I had one. A-get-a-handle-on-your-power-usage-without-spending-$25-on-a-one-time gadget.



The hope? That the information will prompt changes, even just small ones, that will add up. Energy Trust gave 398 Kill A Watts out to 135 library branches in the state this fall. It's popular in Multnomah County: At the moment library patrons have 324 holds on 93 monitors.



The monitors are the least technical in a spectrum of products that help people gauge their energy use. At the other end are home-energy monitors installed by an electrician that pinpoint consumption throughout a house, detailing how much it's costing.



So I plugged the simple Kill A Watt into the wall and then plugged my coffee maker into it. The device gives all kinds of information, but you should be mainly concerned with the wattage the appliances uses and if you leave it plugged in long enough, the kilowatts. A kilowatt hour, equal to 1,000 watt hours, is the billing unit the utility uses.



My idle coffee maker consumes 2.7 watts. But that jumps to 1,040 watts when it's on. Energy Trust includes a crucial chart with the monitor that shows the typical wattage of various appliances and the monthly electricity usage in kilowatt hours. I learned my coffee maker uses more than the 900 watts of the average one.



My crabbiness with the monitor began to dissipate as I got interested. Our new 46-inch LCD television screen posted 82.9 watts on the monitor, just a little more than the 77 watts used by the 1999 19-inch RCA it replaced. But that's way less than the 375 watts of the average 42-inch plasma TV. My computer, printer, telephone and desk lamp together use 167 watts and after six hours that adds up to roughly 1 kilowatt hour, which costs me about 7 cents. Leaving phone chargers plugged in is a big no-no they say. But the Kill A Watt showed mine was using zero energy. As I boasted to Lizzie Rubado at Energy Trust that my charger didn't waste energy, she said not so fast. The monitor won't pick up the tiniest energy loads, and that every phone charger or laptop plug, even if it posts a zero on the Kill A Watt monitor, draws energy.



"When you have a lot of them plugged in all the time ... it does add up," she said.



Loren Lutzenhiser, a professor of Urban Studies and Planning at Portland State University and an expert on the environmental impacts of socio-technical systems, said watt meters are important because energy is invisible and they can help detect waste. But they're not a panacea. Their success is based on the idea that once people know how much energy they waste they'll change. But individuals must take the initiative to buy or check them out of the library and then put the information to good use.



"As a broad brush way to get big emissions reductions we're kidding ourselves," he says. "It takes some work and it doesn't provide really complete information."



Let's say a couple learns their refrigerator is an energy hog and buys an expensive replacement. They might have realized bigger energy savings by simply raising the thermostat.



And just to step back for a moment: Changing light bulbs and unplugging phone chargers won't be enough. Houses, appliances and cars will have to become dramatically more energy efficient. That means stuff that lasts longer, consumes less and behaves better from cradle to cradle.



That said, doing little things is important because it leads people to do other little things. So while that Kill A Watt monitor won't save the planet, I am going to turn the power strip off under my desk at night since it always draws at least 11 watts. And I'm going to try and remember to unplug my cell phone charger.





-- Carrie Sturrock

