Kill A Watt Meter Purchase

  • Active since 1995, Hearth.com is THE place on the internet for free information and advice about wood stoves, pellet stoves and other energy saving equipment.

    We strive to provide opinions, articles, discussions and history related to Hearth Products and in a more general sense, energy issues.

    We promote the EFFICIENT, RESPONSIBLE, CLEAN and SAFE use of all fuels, whether renewable or fossil.
Status
Not open for further replies.

Snowy Rivers

Minister of Fire
Feb 7, 2010
1,810
NW Oregon
I just read the thread on the Electrical useage of the Pellet stoves that was posted.

SOOOOOOOO I have been crowing a lot of how cheaply I heat my home on nut shells but really dont have the total equation on the cost per month to heat the house.

I went on ebay a few minutes ago and bought one of the P3 Kill A Watt Meters for $22 and will do some real time testing to see what the Whitfields are actually costing me for a 24 Hour Period to run.

The numbers that I have always used is around 50 cents a day for the fuel part of the equation.

This is for the Advantage II running on the Low setting. The fans run at a constant spped as I dont mess with the room air fan (The dial does little so I leave it where its happy)

Im guessing that the total cost of heat here under normal circumstances (weather) will be about $25 to $30 a month

Maybe $250 for an entire season.

With the little meter, I can narrow these numbers down and really understand whats happening.


My biggest useage other than the water heater is the Block heater that I keep plugged in on the big truck any time its parked in the driveway.


Maintenance on an engine thats never allowed to cool off is far less, and I can assure you those large Caterpillars are not cheap to work on.


Keep Y'all Posted

Snowy
 
Hi Snowy! Did you get the EZ version? I hope so because it can do more and allows you to plug in your local electric rate. It's only a few bucks more but it does more. It's easy to cancel and change orders on Amazon. Stay warm.
 
Be carefull had mine past summer plugged into a 10,000 btu A/C window unit and month latter tried to remove it, the plug was melted into the meter!
Took some serious tugging to remove but it still works, so few weeks ago tried it on my Whit and it uses 60-100 watt's, so snowy you use hardly anything, cost of a light bulb!
 
The one I ordered is a P4400 P3 Kill A Watt meter.

Cost $22 inluded shipping

We shall see.

Snowy
 
Lennox Traditions II

400 watts for the igniter
25 watts for the auger motor
100 watts for the fans on minimum burn
0.6 power factor ---- Ouch, this will make running on an inverter fun (will need to add some run caps to bring it up to >0.9)

Aaron
 
Snowy Rivers said:
The one I ordered is a P4400 P3 Kill A Watt meter.

Cost $22 inluded shipping

We shall see.

Snowy

That one won't automatically tell you how many dollars an appliance is costing you but with a calculator and knowing how much you pay per KWH, you're good to go! If it wasn't shipped, you could upgrade to the other one for a few bucks more but what the heck! :)
 
Aaron Pasteris said:
Lennox Traditions II

400 watts for the igniter
25 watts for the auger motor
100 watts for the fans on minimum burn
0.6 power factor ---- Ouch, this will make running on an inverter fun (will need to add some run caps to bring it up to >0.9)

Aaron

Aaron:
Found your comment about running a pellet stove (pf~0.6) on an inverter interesting - and accurate. I've got a 3Kw gasoline generator that I use to run my stove when I lose power. When the pellet stove first fires up on the generator (ignitor on, fans running) the generator slows a bit and I hear the throttle feedback turning up the fuel and the gas engine picking up the load. The fans in the pellet stove start and they sound more or less similar as when they are running on standard electrical power. But then, when the ignitor drops out about 4 or 5 minutes later I hear the load drop off of the gasoline engine - and the pellet fans distinctly slow down! I assume the sudden drop in power factor when the ignitor (resistive load) drops off causes some weird voltage wave forms (non-sinusoidal maybe?) or perhaps the inductive load (motors) throws the power frequency way down from ~60 hertz? I'm not sure what's going on, but my gasoline generator clearly does not like the inductive load of the pellet stove. I've been thinking about bringing an osciloscope home from work one day and seeing just what kind of power and current-voltage phase angle my generator is producing under this inductive pellet stove load. ?? Haven't doen it yet ...

Ahh, but I've found a fix. Not a cheap one mind you, but a fix. I found if I just plug an electric clothes iron (~1400 watts) into the other leg of the 240V generator, that the generator load becomes dominated by the resistive element instead of the inductive element (pellet stove). When I do this I immediately hear the generator's gasoline engine pick up the additional load and the fans on my pellet stove speed up! They sound much more normal. The only down side with this fix is that my ~1 gallon gas tank on the generator only lasts about 2 hours - instead of 5 or 6 hours with just the pellet stove load. And high octaine premium gas (which I always use in all my small motors) is running about $3.60 a gallon this week hre in NY! So my fix is not a great one. I'be been wondering if 120 VAC to 120 VAC isolation transformer would help here.? I.m not sure if the electric iron is simply improving the balance of the two legs of my generator power - or improving the power factor - and making the electric generation more sinusoidal or something.

Any ideas?

RonB
 
Either way it will be a tremendously helpful device. I have the one that does cost per kwh but now our rates change with usage so I had to program it for the average rate.

Both units are extremely helpful. I also highly recommend "the energy detective" 5000 series. I have had one for almost a year and it hasn't 'saved' us money but it sure has made us more aware of how much we are spending a day and how much it actually does cost to leave every light on in the house along with other things that constantly suck power unless they are unplugged.

www.theenergydetective.com
 
That TED is really a tinker's dream device! Amazing!!!!
 
velotocht said:
Aaron Pasteris said:
Lennox Traditions II

400 watts for the igniter
25 watts for the auger motor
100 watts for the fans on minimum burn
0.6 power factor ---- Ouch, this will make running on an inverter fun (will need to add some run caps to bring it up to >0.9)

Aaron

Aaron:
Found your comment about running a pellet stove (pf~0.6) on an inverter interesting - and accurate. I've got a 3Kw gasoline generator that I use to run my stove when I lose power. When the pellet stove first fires up on the generator (ignitor on, fans running) the generator slows a bit and I hear the throttle feedback turning up the fuel and the gas engine picking up the load. The fans in the pellet stove start and they sound more or less similar as when they are running on standard electrical power. But then, when the ignitor drops out about 4 or 5 minutes later I hear the load drop off of the gasoline engine - and the pellet fans distinctly slow down! I assume the sudden drop in power factor when the ignitor (resistive load) drops off causes some weird voltage wave forms (non-sinusoidal maybe?) or perhaps the inductive load (motors) throws the power frequency way down from ~60 hertz? I'm not sure what's going on, but my gasoline generator clearly does not like the inductive load of the pellet stove. I've been thinking about bringing an osciloscope home from work one day and seeing just what kind of power and current-voltage phase angle my generator is producing under this inductive pellet stove load. ?? Haven't doen it yet ...

Ahh, but I've found a fix. Not a cheap one mind you, but a fix. I found if I just plug an electric clothes iron (~1400 watts) into the other leg of the 240V generator, that the generator load becomes dominated by the resistive element instead of the inductive element (pellet stove). When I do this I immediately hear the generator's gasoline engine pick up the additional load and the fans on my pellet stove speed up! They sound much more normal. The only down side with this fix is that my ~1 gallon gas tank on the generator only lasts about 2 hours - instead of 5 or 6 hours with just the pellet stove load. And high octaine premium gas (which I always use in all my small motors) is running about $3.60 a gallon this week hre in NY! So my fix is not a great one. I'be been wondering if 120 VAC to 120 VAC isolation transformer would help here.? I.m not sure if the electric iron is simply improving the balance of the two legs of my generator power - or improving the power factor - and making the electric generation more sinusoidal or something.

Any ideas?

RonB

Some great discussion here but a simple volt meter may be all that is neccessary to support or dismiss your claim. What can you tell me about the voltage regulator on your generator? It may not be that robust. I would first measure Hz to make sure your gen is running at 60hz under both load conditions you described. When you mentioned the fans slow down when the ignitor exstingished suggest a significant droop in speed and maybe even voltage. If your scope does current and voltage you certaining can determine the power factor and determine if thats your issue. Goodluck and keep us informed!
 
I have a TED 1001. I switched the current transformers from the incoming mains to the generator inlet wires as an experiment, and found it read the watts just fine. Not sure if it's worth the 85 bucks for extra CTs to eliminate the shuffle.
 
I have seen the same thing happen while using a generator to run our Quadrafire.

We were using a little 1700 watt Coleman portable gen set.

These little critters are pretty basic. The power output is "OK" but nowhere near what I would call stable.

The governors are, again, very basic and not the type that can maintain "clean power"

We ran our Quadrafire on the gen set back during a large snow event in 2008
The operation sounds just like what you describe, with the fans speeding up and slowing down.

Our Quad would make an odd whinning noise, that I suspect was a harmonic setting up in the rotor on the room air fan due to the "unclean power"

Likely the readings you will get from the scope will scare you.

These little gen sets are really basic and lack the components to deliver steady clean 60HZ power at a steady 120/240 volts.

My worry when using the gen set was having issues with the control board, but it did fine.

The biggy is of course "Voltage Spikes" these can foul things in a hurry.

We have since that time installed a 20 KW diesel gen set thats wired into the house via a large transfer switch.

I can run a fair amount of stuff with the diesel set.

During an outage we shut down the Water heater and have an exact usage chart of what can run and what can't.

Pellet stoves are at the top of the list for sure.

My worries with the newer stoves is that the control boards may be less tollerant of "Dirty power" than the older stoves.

Micro electronics can be very fussy.

Such stuff as light bulbs and fan motors are usually imune to all but radical variations in the power stream.


As long as the voltage does not go toooooooooooo HIGH the fans will only speed up or slow down some.

Slight variations in the HZ will cause motors to whine some but unless its way off, there is not a big issue.

The triacs used to control the room air fan speeds are simply a way to chop off little snippets of each phase and control the delivered power.

A cheap Triac can cause motor noise.

If you decide to scope the gen set it would be interesting to hear the results.

Good luck and keep warm.

Snowy
 
Well, that puts my mind at ease, at least a little bit, Snowy, about the generator set. I have a Coleman 5000 watt that I use when we have power outages and always worried about the control boxes. I do have an APC LE1200 voltage regulator on each one to steady the voltage and filter spikes. I picked the Coleman up at Target when they were closing them out for $300!!! I went back the next week and they had 6 left and marked down to $150 each!!!! Like a fool, I didn't buy them all.. I have a scope but still haven't looked at the output. Like you said, it would probably scare me!

VelvetFoot, on their website, not much is said about the display of the 1000 series. They really focus on the 5000, which is nice but a real hassle for me to hook up. Does the 1000 give you all the info you need?
 
velotocht said:
Aaron Pasteris said:
Lennox Traditions II

400 watts for the igniter
25 watts for the auger motor
100 watts for the fans on minimum burn
0.6 power factor ---- Ouch, this will make running on an inverter fun (will need to add some run caps to bring it up to >0.9)

Aaron

Aaron:
Found your comment about running a pellet stove (pf~0.6) on an inverter interesting - and accurate. I've got a 3Kw gasoline generator that I use to run my stove when I lose power. When the pellet stove first fires up on the generator (ignitor on, fans running) the generator slows a bit and I hear the throttle feedback turning up the fuel and the gas engine picking up the load. The fans in the pellet stove start and they sound more or less similar as when they are running on standard electrical power. But then, when the ignitor drops out about 4 or 5 minutes later I hear the load drop off of the gasoline engine - and the pellet fans distinctly slow down! I assume the sudden drop in power factor when the ignitor (resistive load) drops off causes some weird voltage wave forms (non-sinusoidal maybe?) or perhaps the inductive load (motors) throws the power frequency way down from ~60 hertz? I'm not sure what's going on, but my gasoline generator clearly does not like the inductive load of the pellet stove. I've been thinking about bringing an osciloscope home from work one day and seeing just what kind of power and current-voltage phase angle my generator is producing under this inductive pellet stove load. ?? Haven't doen it yet ...

Ahh, but I've found a fix. Not a cheap one mind you, but a fix. I found if I just plug an electric clothes iron (~1400 watts) into the other leg of the 240V generator, that the generator load becomes dominated by the resistive element instead of the inductive element (pellet stove). When I do this I immediately hear the generator's gasoline engine pick up the additional load and the fans on my pellet stove speed up! They sound much more normal. The only down side with this fix is that my ~1 gallon gas tank on the generator only lasts about 2 hours - instead of 5 or 6 hours with just the pellet stove load. And high octaine premium gas (which I always use in all my small motors) is running about $3.60 a gallon this week hre in NY! So my fix is not a great one. I'be been wondering if 120 VAC to 120 VAC isolation transformer would help here.? I.m not sure if the electric iron is simply improving the balance of the two legs of my generator power - or improving the power factor - and making the electric generation more sinusoidal or something.

Any ideas?

RonB

Isolation transformer won't really help - and yes the iron is helping the power factor, its resistive load is swamping the reactive energy - it's better to put the resistive load on the same leg.

For my stove putting a 100 watt bulb on the same circuit will raise the power factor to about 0.83 but unless I really want the light I'm wasting almost 50% of the energy.

By adding a capacitor in parallel, the capacitor will compensate for the reactive energy of the induction motor and the generator needs only to supply the real component of the load.

http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/vol_2/chpt_11/4.html

Aaron
 
tjnamtiw, to tell the truth, I'm not up to date on the capabilities of the 5000. I know it's not that cheap. The 1001 will measure stuff like kw, kw daily and monthly peak (I think) plus alarm, kwhr daily and month to date, kwhr projected to end of month, costs associated with usage (I put the values in but don't use that), voltage high and low for day plus alarm. The 1001 communicates the ct and voltage readings via power line carrier to the display unit. That can get tricky. They have to be on the same leg and I find that if I put on one switch with cf lights it'll slow down the data transmission rate, but if I put on another one, it'll go back to 1/sec. Even if it slows a little, it's not that much of a big deal. I'd be concerned if I had X10 home automation that uses the plc as well. I don't know if the 5000 uses the same plc method, or if it's wireless. In doing a web search, there may be other products that do it wirelessly.
 
All this talk made me stop at HD on the way home from work. Picked up the Kill A Watt EZ for $23. Can't wait to get home and get it plugged in. Have always wondered what it really costs in electric.
 
velvetfoot said:
tjnamtiw, to tell the truth, I'm not up to date on the capabilities of the 5000. I know it's not that cheap. The 1001 will measure stuff like kw, kw daily and monthly peak (I think) plus alarm, kwhr daily and month to date, kwhr projected to end of month, costs associated with usage (I put the values in but don't use that), voltage high and low for day plus alarm. The 1001 communicates the ct and voltage readings via power line carrier to the display unit. That can get tricky. They have to be on the same leg and I find that if I put on one switch with cf lights it'll slow down the data transmission rate, but if I put on another one, it'll go back to 1/sec. Even if it slows a little, it's not that much of a big deal. I'd be concerned if I had X10 home automation that uses the plc as well. I don't know if the 5000 uses the same plc method, or if it's wireless. In doing a web search, there may be other products that do it wirelessly.

I watched the installation video for the 5000 and they used a two pole breaker to tap into both legs. I assumed it was for power but now I see what you say about sending the data down the power line to your outlets. That makes more sense because they put the box from the ct's in the bottom of the main panel, which wouldn't work well at all for wireless transmission. The real killer for me is that they say the 'receiver' must be plugged into an UNUSED outlet near the computer. I don't know about you but it's hard to find an unused outlet ANYWHERE in my house! :) To find one near the computer is impossible as you must plug in the computer, a monitor, a printer, the modem and the router at the very least. This 'receiver' feeds into an open port on the wireless router, which is why it needs to be close to it.
 
DexterDay said:
All this talk made me stop at HD on the way home from work. Picked up the Kill A Watt EZ for $23. Can't wait to get home and get it plugged in. Have always wondered what it really costs in electric.

I have one also and have plugged it into just about every appliance. For the winter, I kept close watch over my electric space heaters in my workshop and downstairs 'man cave'. The only negative is that it won't read 220 volt such as water heater, heat pump, or pool pumps. I wish it had the capability to accept a ct or clamp on amprobe style input. That's what intrigued me about the TED equipment.
 
tjnamtiw said:
DexterDay said:
All this talk made me stop at HD on the way home from work. Picked up the Kill A Watt EZ for $23. Can't wait to get home and get it plugged in. Have always wondered what it really costs in electric.

I have one also and have plugged it into just about every appliance. For the winter, I kept close watch over my electric space heaters in my workshop and downstairs 'man cave'. The only negative is that it won't read 220 volt such as water heater, heat pump, or pool pumps. I wish it had the capability to accept a ct or clamp on amprobe style input. That's what intrigued me about the TED equipment.
Where I live there are 2 rates per KWH. The billing is .02453 for the first 1,000 KWH. Then .018374 after 1,000. How would one calculate this. Our average consumption is 1,200-1,400 KWH. Would I "add" a little to the .02453 to average out what we go over (the first 1,000). I wanna hook this thing up so bad. But I want to be accurate in the price I put in. Stove is cooling off now for Cleaning Time.. Any help would be appreciated
 
I have my read unit plugged into the same outlet my computer is plugged in to. I have it plugged in on a power strip before my battery back up so that isolates it. I have had no problems so far.
 
Countryboymo said:
I have my read unit plugged into the same outlet my computer is plugged in to. I have it plugged in on a power strip before my battery back up so that isolates it. I have had no problems so far.

Well, that's good to know. Their installation video says NEVER plug it into a power strip or into an outlet with something else. I guess they are just covering their butts. I'm going to write them and ask.
 
BD911, Snowey Rivers, Aaron:

Thanks for the thoughtful and useful inputs on my generator / pellet stove combination and the somewhat strange speed variations I get when running the two during a power outage. The first time I hooked this up was last March when we had a huge wet snow fall turned ice storm here in Dutchess county - which results in a several day power outage due to the many fallen tree limbs. Unfortunately, at that time I was carting my little generator between my home and two neighbors - trying to keep everyone house above 32F and avoid massive water pipe freezing. At that time understanding the pellet stove speed variation was low on the priority list. But I certainly should hook it up again and run some basic voltage, frequency and phase checks. Playing with this stuff when not under pressure could be fun!

As to my generator, it's an E-bay purchase (~250$ for 3 Kw) - it's a low budget knock of of a Honda generator I think. I had a a peak at the generator tonight - I don't see any type of electronic control for voltage or frequency. There is a throttle (speed) feedback from the gasoline engine fly wheel - mechanical, not electronic. I suspect frequency is simply controlled by RPM. ??

There are three 12 AWG wires coming out of the generator that go to a ganged 2-pole 20 Amp breaker. The third wire is neutral / ground. I assume these are L1, N, and L2. There are two smaller (16 AWG?) red wires that go to a DC connector andbreaker labeled 12 VDC, 10 AMP trip. And there are two yellow wires, also very small, that go to a cheapy volt meter (300 VAC). That meter is pretty chinsey. The label on the generator says 120/240 VAC, 3000 W at pf=1.0. So obviously pf is critical to maximum power delivery.

I had always assumed these generators were a bi-pole rotor, DC excited, on slip rings (no commutator) and a center tapped bi-pole stator that generated two 120 volt legs with center tap. I thought power output was controlled by rotor excitation current and frequency controlled by motor RPM. Is this correct? Anyone know how these emergency generators work?

Maybe I'll get some time in the next few weeks to hookup and O-scope and peak at the waveforms. It would be a good learning experience - and of course I'll post my findings.

By the way - during last year's storm, I found hooking my generator to my oil-fired hot water circulation furnace was a better way to keep our (mine and 2 neighbors) houses warm - as the oil furnaces hat much more heat output per unit time than my pellet stove. Also, for some reason, the larger oil furnace combustion motor seemed to run much better with the generator than the pellet stove. Maybe the load - even though inductive - was bigger, therefore it ran in the sweet spot of the generator? I'm not quite sure what was going on, by I concluded heating with the furnace and generator worked much better than heating with the pellet stove and generator!

Take care

RonB.
 
As I mentioned before, my only real concern is the micro electronics in the control boards.

The feed motor and the fans are pretty imune to anything but serious spikes or Brownouts that cause high amp draw.

The Quad took its time on the gen set in stride and has worked flawless since.

I am not sure but I think most pellet stove can handle being run on a gen set.

If your worried, call the manufacture of the stove and ask them about such things.

I would think that if this was a real issue, that it would be mentioned in the owners book.


Snowy
 
Status
Not open for further replies.