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Great green gadgets - Part 1The gadgets in our green store help you find energy leaks and zap them fast.
Over the last few weeks, TerraPass has started selling a handful of products that help to save money and energy around the home and office. Two of my particular favorites are the Smart Strip and the Kill A Watt. The Smart Strip aims to solve a problem that has become a particular bugbear of mine: electronics sitting on standby and chargers plugged in, keeping warm on your electricity bill. The average home consumes 5-10% of its total energy bill in wasted standby electricity. The International Energy Agency says (pdf) that roughly 1% of global carbon dioxide emissions are caused by standby power alone. Here’s an example. Attached to my computer I have the following peripherals:
Each one of these accessories has its own power supply, and every one of them has a standby mode. And none of them is necessary unless I’m using the computer. This is where the Smart Strip helps. The basic idea is that when my laptop is off, everything else is turned off. Completely off. Plug your main appliance into the Smart Strip’s blue control socket. When your main appliance is on, everything else is on. When it’s off, everything else is off. If you have something (a desk lamp?) that needs to stay on independent of the others, you can plug it into a red socket to receive constant power. The Smart Strip is also a surge protector, and the model we’re currently stocking includes fax and modem protection. Last night (strictly in the name of science) I left all the peripherals mentioned above on standby instead of turning them completely off. Over 14 hours I wasted 0.82 kWh of electricity. Average this out over the year (with a heady 1.4 kWh per weekend day) and you end up with 361 kWh for the year. At California energy prices that will set you back $54 — and 300lbs CO2. Which means you can buy a Smart Strip and still have $20 left over. Aren’t we nice to you? Kill A Watt
You may be wondering how I measured my energy savings from the Smart Strip. Enter the Kill A Watt. The Kill A Watt is a great gadget for any eco-geek. It doesn’t save you any electricity directly, but it shows you where you can save. Our office Kill A Watt is in high demand as people try to figure out, for example, whether the coffee machine is more economically left on, keeping warm, or whether it is better to heat it up from cold every time it’s needed (turns out keeping it on during peak coffee demand is most efficient). The Kill A Watt embodies a theme we talk about a lot at TerraPass: understand your carbon footprint and then take steps to reduce it. The device is a real-life carbon calculator. Use it around the home and office; challenge yourself and your colleagues to reduce your energy costs; figure out which appliance is sucking the most power (it’s the second fridge, I’ll bet). As well as standard metering functions, the Kill A Watt calculates cumulative energy use, which you can use to quickly work out how much any individual appliance is costing you. Check it out in our new green store. Comments
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I have Smart Strips for my laptop and my entertainment system. Two little disappointments I've had is sometimes they are finicky and need the current setpoint to be adjusted up or down so they can tell when the control device is on. The other problem is that the control device is never disconnected, so my laptop is always drawing it's standby power (6-7 watts). I suspect a desktop doesn't draw any, and neither does my stereo in it's full off mode, but for my laptop, I actually flick the strip off just like a regular strip unfortunately.
I've borrowed a Kill-a-Watt before and wow my roommate had never seen the energy geek in me so fully on display. Those devices are useful, enlightening, and fun.
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I must say as soon as I read this I thought it was misleading regarding laptops, and I am glad the first comment points this out. The original description does not explain that a threshold has to be set, and it is not clear to me that the current drawn by the laptop charger is going to correspond very closely to whether it the laptop is switched on or off. Better example might be entertainment systems.
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Interesting. I actually found that it spotted the laptop on/off without any trouble at the existing threshold level.But adjusting the tolerance is pretty easy with a little dial on the side.
Of course, the "control" item will still be drawing power, if it needs it. Turning the strip off and/or unplugging the laptop seems like an easy thing to do though.
Thanks for the comments, you can now review products on the product pages so feel free to post stuff there too.
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I'd love to know what the carbon footprint is for making the kill a watt and the smart strip are, combined with me not needing my old surge protector for my computer anymore. Ie: if everyone gets a smart strip, then we have a bunch of old surge protectors with off switches lying around. What's that footprint?
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Born in 1943 I grew up with recyling and green. We burnt dried cow chips in the wood stove. Yeah Really. My husband the city boy has discovered green and lessening the carbon footprint(I am thrilled). Anyway enough Of that onto my comments:
Its hard on a budget to buy green but we have changed out all our lightbulbs, garden, preserve our own food when possible. The thing that I don't see talked about a lot are solar tubes. We had two put in our baths when we built our home 11 years ago. Only one size was available but recently we purchase two 14" diameter tubes for the LR ,DR area. The room was dismal even with lights on. Now I wake up to a room so bright that I now know the carpets need cleaned. Unexpected bonus the placement acutally lights the breakfast nook and kitchen. We could not find an installer so my husband did it himself. I love this product. Now since I live in Kansas I want to get a couple of windmills to hook up to the grid.
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I'm not too clear on what exactly is needed to adjust the smartstrip. I'm wondering if this is complicated or if it is something that my father who may have trouble with - partially out of stubborness and partially out of not being very too technological minded, he's not likely to use something that he is going to get frustrated setting up. So can someone let me know if this is something someone like this would likely have trouble with, or is it pretty self-explanatory?
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How would this work with a TIVO? Does anyone know if the TIVO needs to be on to receive a cable signal?
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I have a Tivo unit that is several years old. Tivo is designed to be on all the time. It needs to be on to record the shows. It is possiable that they have achived some energy saving measures in the newer units, but thats how it is in the units like mine that are a couple years old.
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Post 3, "turning the strip off" as an alternative can also "easily" be done with a traditional power strip that costs $9.95. Seems like for the standby mode devices, it's back to the drawing board until the "smart" power strip makes sense to the wider population. I think it's important in the conversation going forward for us all to leave our biases behind and simply judge new technology on its merits, right? That way, there's no quarter for the yet unconvinced to be rolling their eyes when, in desperation to put a positive spin on something that's marginally better, if that, we tout features that practically make no sense under current design. I suggest patience, Post 3, patience and an eye to moving ahead when the time is right. That will leave no quarter for excuses and will help us win this battle over the long-term.
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