If you are enrolling in alternative energy kindergarten, this is your first essential piece of equipment. Everyone new to the field is always writing on Q&A boards questions like "how many solar panels do I need to power my small cottage." Essentially an un-answerable question. The kill-a-watt meter is the first step toward answering those kind of questions.

Make yourself a table of appliances you want to run and then just start logging data. This meter allows you to see not just how much power is being used RIGHT NOW, but also a cumulative power useage over a day or 2 for things that aren't on all the time like a TV, heater, stereo or computer.

Once you can total up the ammount of kilowatt hours you want to run, then you can start asking meaningful questions like how many panels and how many batteries do I need.

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