Tuesday, April 07, 2009

Borrow a Kill-A-Watt, Reduce Your Energy Consumption

How much energy is sucked up by the charger while your phone is not even charging? How many watts is your computer chugging down while in sleep mode? How about that MP3 charger, languishing in the wall outlet?

You can find out by plugging a Kill-A-Watt energy monitor into the outlet, then plugging your device into the energy monitor.

There are 14 Kill-a-Watts in both Main and the Science libraries. Provide the name of your dorm when checking out the device, and your dorm earns points in the Ecolympics competition. The loan period is 4 days. First come, first served.

Walk around the corner toward the north entrance to the Science Center Commons and you'll find a display of softly glowing globes, illustrating current energy consumption in each dorm. At this moment, Barrows and Harkness are both a lovely shade of green (good!) while Price and Bailey are glowing red (not so energy efficient).

Kill-A-Watt devices are offered for sale over the internet (possibly locally, too; try Watson's). Search google and there are plenty of options. iKitchen.com has a good price.

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