How can you check if your appliances are power hungry?

If you look at your power bill each month and wonder if there’s another way, why not assess how much energy your appliances use?

There are a number of things you could do, depending on how far you wish to take it – starting with looking for the energy star rating sticker on the appliance.

The next step could be to buy a small meter that plugs in between the power socket and the appliance to measure the power usage and the cost. Such units are sold at the likes of Mitre 10. Prices start from as little as $25. Note: If you have children or grandchildren going flatting this is a lifesaver and solves many housemate disputes. 

If you want something more elaborate, there are devices like an ego smart Wi-Fi socket that will send the information to your smartphone.

And if you want to measure total household consumption then you can do that too – the product we looked at was described like this: “A wireless transmitter is installed in your meter box with a sensor that simply clips over the main power wire, which then measures the current flow and sends that information wirelessly to the indoor display.” The display shows the power consumption and the cost. These units can get pretty fancy and can include smartphone features, but a basic unit costs about $129 (Owl Micro+).

How do you save power at home? If you’ve got great tips to share with other readers, why not consider writing for GrownUps?