PowerMate to measure your power, mate.

I'm not your average electricity consumer. I'm an obsessive freak about it.

I own a contraption called a power-mate that, as the name might suggest, measures power ...maaaate. 

I think every family needs access to one.

You can plug it into any appliance (or a number of appliances as seen right) and it measures how much power that appliances is using (watts), how much energy it is using over time (kilowatt hours), how much it is costing to run and the guilt inducing greenhouse gases.

Once you know how much power things are using you can change your behaviour accordingly*.

What family fun we have guessing the power consumption of things. It's the Fejer Family equivalent to the 'guess the jelly-beans in the jar' competition only much less exciting and rewarding.

But FUN! You better believe it.

But you don't need to own one of these things, you can borrow one.

Many local councils are all over this energy saving thing. They have made up special home energy audit kits. These kits will almost all have a power meter of some sort in them. 

Ask your local library or council about it and if they haven't got any idea, perhaps it would be timely to give them one.

*We have a halogen 'up-lamp' - nice warm light that makes everyone look lovely. I know it is power hungry because it gets so hot you can cook a sausage on it.

The power-mate reveals it uses 400 freakin' watts. That is more that all the lighting in the house put together.