The Kill-a-watt is a home energy monitor designed for assessing how much electricity a certain appliance or electronic uses.

Unlike some other home energy monitors we’ve covered, the Kill-a-watt monitors one outlet, not your entire home. This allows you to see how much electricity a certain appliance or set of electronics uses by plugging them directly into the outlet on the front of the Kill-a-watt.

The screen will be right above the outlet, so it’s not exactly convenient for long term use either, however this is not intended as a permanent monitor anyway.

Assessing your appliances or electronics can help you locate sources of power drain by selectively plugging in suspected culprits. One advantage over full-house energy monitors.

The Kill-A-Watt comes with a bunch of analysis features as well. It allows you to forecast how much an appliance or electronic is going to cost you based on it’s current wattage. If you do want to use it  in a permanent location, it has a cumulative kilowatt-hour monitor as well. It’s accuracy is rated at within 0.2%.

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The Powercost is a home energy monitor, allowing you to see how much electricity you use.

The Powercost will tell you how much your energy is costing you as well, allowing you to see the effects of any green initiatives you’re trying in your home. You will be able to see exactly how much energy you are using, seeing this will help to motivate you to reduce you consumption, and save some money while you’re at it!

It’s easy to install and only includes 2 pieces. The sensor is separate from the display, so unlike some other monitors, the display can be placed anywhere and is not required to be on an outlet.

If you live in Ontario and have Hydro One as your energy provider, you are actually eligible for a free Powercost unit. Give them a call and get yours!

If you’re outside of Ontario, you can get your own Powercost for $150.

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This monitor is a mash-up of a bunch of different pieces of information to create a better view of your energy usage and costs.

It gets information about time-of-day costs and local weather, and combines this with your energy usage. This allows you to see what usage times are costing you the most, let’s you see when your usage is unusually high, and lets you predict when your bill is going to spike.

This monitor has the benefit of using additional sources of information to help you better analyze your electricity usage.

This is being tested in select markets before hitting the shelves soon. If you are in New York city, you can get one for testing from Consumerpowerline. If you’re outside New York, you’re outside the testing area, but send them an email anyway and you might be able to get your hands on one.

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