To Kill a Kill-a-Watt

Killy, during better times.

Have you ever lost a best friend?  I don't mean like in the mall or something.  I mean for good.  And I don't mean 'for good' to mean 'in order to defeat evil'. I can hardly imagine a situation arising where that would be an effective tact.

My best friend was Kill A Watt­™ by P3 International.  Yes, that Kill A Watt­™, the one that runs you $25 and lets you monitor the electricity appetite of all your hungry gadgets. Does your best friend's name have the word "trademark" in it? If he's Mark Tradesman, yeah, okay, I guess, but mine's no man at all.  He's a machine.  A watt-killing machine.  Or at least he was.  Cue flashback interlude.

We used to laugh together.  "Can you believe my refrigerator?  It's so powerful!"  "Yeah. EnergyStar? More like EnergyBlackHole!" "Dynamite astronomical reference, Killy." "Thanks."

That's just one example.

Together we studied the energy consumption of all my appliances.  We judged their instantaneous power draws.  We evaluated their electricity usage over long periods of time.  We never figured out what to make of the other buttons.  We didn't care.

How much energy does my microwave use, Killy?  Eleven kilowatt-hours per month.  Is that more or less energy-intensive compared to my oven?  I don't know, the oven runs on 240 V and my Kill-a-Watt only measures on 120 V lines. Anti-climactic, I know, but even the best superheroes have flaws.  Come on, you know you watched the first season of Heroes.

The perp, lookin' all smug...

But our time together was cut short.  Killy was cut down in the line of duty.  With winter approaching, I made the decision that I'd be keeping my nighttime central heat at a nippy 61° F, and supplementing with a ceramic space heater in my bedroom.  Naturally my next step was to gauge the watt-hours I would be racking up.  I was offsetting $3.49-per-gallon heating oil, but burning lumps of coal to stay toasty.  It proved fateful.

My Bionaire BCH9221 ceramic tower heater ran me $70 at Home Depot, less here.  With an electric thermostat, a remote control, oscillation, it had all the earmarks of a real energy saver for my heating needs.  Operating at 1500 watts means that four hours of use per night amounts to 6 kwh daily flung onto your electric bill - nearly 200 per month.  But the impact of turning down a furnace a whole five degrees that runs at 4000 watts and guzzles precious petroleum, well that's truly significant. 

Let's get to the lesson.  Fifteen-hundred watts of electricity flowing through one outlet - no problem.  But flowing through an extension cord into an outlet that also shares a laptop, and, on that somber, black night, a floor lamp - that's what we call a suicide mission.  What I discovered the next morning was graphic.  If you have children in the room, specifically plastic ones, you may want to shield their eyes.

Killy, 2010 - 2010

How does one go on from here?  Can I waltz into my local hardware store and snag a replacement?  Well duh.  Will it be the same as the glory months Killy and I spent together one magical Summer and Fall?  Is it ever?  If question marks cost a quarter each, would our society be more declarative?  Who can know?

Kids, relish your time with those who matter to you.  You never know when a surge of electrons will fry their internal components and melt their exterior casing.  No metaphor here.  I just miss my Kill A Watt.  Trademark...