Buy power monitors to measure electricity use
Any of these is a great way to start cutting your electricity bill
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As I explain in How to save electricity, our family cut our home electricity use by about half just by measuring the electricity use of each device or appliance in our home, figuring out where the biggest energy wasters were, and cutting there. I personally think that a power monitor, such as the Kill A Watt meter or other products listed below, is one of the best investments you can make - you will almost certainly earn back what you spent on the meter in energy savings within a few months of your purchase.
There are two types of power monitors here: whole-house, and single-device. Whole-house monitors can track electricity usage at the utility meter, while single-device monitors only measure consumption of whatever is plugged into them.
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Single-device electricity monitors
The Kill A Watt meter in its simplest form is probably the most popular of the single-device meters. It has been around for several years (I bought mine about three years ago, and paid three times what it sells for now) and so has established itself as dependable. It does not have some of the fancier features of other single-device meters, such as being able to predict monthly costs, but in my mind it is a better investment - dependable, simple, idiot-proof. It took me about 10 seconds to learn how to use it. But people who have bought other monitors featured here have also been happy with the result. It's your decision!
Note that the last item, the Watts Up Pro, is considerably more costly than the others. It can record line quality and diagnose voltage drop and loading problems, identify surge and steady-state demand requirements, and monitor voltage dips and surges as well as measure kilowatt hour consumption and cost. If you just want to save energy, these extra features won't be of much use to you.
Whole-house electricity monitors
These devices cost more than most of the single-device monitors, but can measure whole house electricity usage and are very helpful for measuring the use of big electricity consumers such as central air conditioning, electric dryers, electric heating, and other devices that can't be plugged into a standard 120 volt outlet. The EM100B, for example, comes with a "Tare" button that you press before a device kicks in - similar to taking the tare of a container on a scale before you fill it with a product to be purchased - and the device will measure only the extra consumption - that of the device turned on after the Tare button was pressed.
I recommend starting with a cheap single-device unit above, and if you find that helpful but still want to know whole house consumption or consumption of devices that can't be plugged into a single-device monitor, buy one of those below as well. The two types of units complement each other nicely.
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