Using the KILL A WATT P3
Plug the Kill A Watt into the wall, then plug the appliance into the socket on the front of the Kill A
Watt. Next turn on the appliance or equipment.
• Suggestion: When monitoring a refrigerator or freezer, use an extension cord to position
the “Kill A Watt” in a location convenient for reading.
• Before testing the appliance find the “name plate” that tells you how many volts, watts, etc.
the appliance should pull when in use.
• For example if a toaster’s “name plate” says it should be pulling 1800 watts, when its
plugged in press the watt button on the “Kill A Watt”, it should read 1800 watts or less.
Another example: If your coffee maker is pulling 7.4 amps and the rating on the name plate
was 7.5, this is good because it is reading correctly.
• When you first use the “Kill A Watt” the time is displayed in minutes and hours (00:00), but
after 99 hours have gone by, the display will switch to show only hours (up to 9999). Once
the time limit is reached, it will start over again at zero.
Press the “Watt” button to read the power usage in watts.
• For some appliances the reading may vary depending on what the appliance is doing. For
example, a printer will use more power when printing than when idle.
• Try turning the appliance off, and see if the power usage goes to zero. Many appliances
continue to use power even when turned “off” – this is referred to as a power hog, vampire
or phantom, and it can add up over time since the power is being used 24/7. Appliances
that use power when turned off can be unplugged or plugged into a power strip and the
user can turn the power strip to “off”.
• An appliance that uses 20 watts even when turned off will use 176 kilowatt-hours of energy
in a year – costing you about $18 annually.
Press the purple KWH/Hour “MONEY BUTTON” once for KWH usage and twice for time elapsed.
• The final button is the “MONEY BUTTON”. Use this button to toggle back and forth
between the number of hours over which the equipment was monitored, and the kilowatt
hours of electricity used over that period. Record the numbers for both hours and kwh on
the worksheet provided before disconnecting the Kill A Watt monitor from the wall.
• The accumulated kwh data will be “lost” when the meter is disconnected because this is
how the Kill A Watt resets itself.
Determining the cost of running appliances or equipment.
• SECPA recommends that you keep your appliance or equipment plugged in for at least 12
hours to gather and record sufficient data.
• Now take the kwh use and the amount of hours recorded, and plug that data into the
attached worksheet’s formula columns.
• The more items you test, the more you will see where you can save on your electric bill.
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