Are your energy bills are starting to spiral out of control? Are you concerned about “vampire” appliances sucking up energy when they are not in use? While some energy consumption increases are expected, such as when the weather is hot and your AC is running more often, there are often energy hogs in the home that can be harder to track down. That’s where an electricity usage monitor can come in handy by helping you track energy use for each appliance in your home, This enables you to better manage your energy consumption and make smarter decisions. You may be surprised to find out just which devices are costing you the most every day in your home, even when they’re not being used.
An electricity usage monitor is a small, portable device that’s relatively inexpensive to purchase. Most models work by plugging into the same outlet as the appliance you want to measure. By using the device’s LCD screen you can view your energy consumption and work out your projected usage costs by day, week, month, and year. Some models even allow you to enter your utility provider’s costs so that you can measure usage in dollars.
With smart home gadgets becoming more popular, energy usage monitors are now a buit-in feature of smart plugs. Smart plugs don’t have a display, but instead communicate wirelessly with devices like the Amazon Echo and smart phone apps. By using smart plugs you can not only see how much energy an appliance is using, you can ensure it’s not getting any power unless it’s needed.
