Plug-in power meters allow you to measure the electricity consumption of appliances around your home or workplace. A range of energy saving options can often be identified, and if nothing else, the devices will help you understand which appliances are using the most energy. The usage guide shown below is for this plug-in mains power meter available from Steplight.
Measuring Standby Loads
These are the steps to measure the standby power consumption of an appliance:
- Plug the appliance into the power meter.

- Turn the appliance back on to ‘stand by’ (eg, so the remote can be used on a television).
- Press ‘FUNC’ on the power meter twice to display the power consumption in Watts.
- This is how much power the appliance is using in standby mode.
So how much can be saved by turning all these appliances off at the wall?
- Measure the standby power (in Watts) of an individual or group of appliances.
- To work out the cost, find how much you pay per kWh on your electricity bill (often around $0.25/kWh), and multiply this by the hours in standby per day (an example of 20 hours per day is shown below).
- To calculate the approximate total savings (the power meter can do a similar calculation to this automatically if you have already entered your electricity tariff):
Measuring Appliance Electricity Consumption
There are two ways to measure appliance consumption. If you know how often an appliance is used then measure the Watts of the appliance and multiply this by the number of hours:
For some appliances, power usage changes over time, so consumption cannot be calculated using the above method. This is the case for a refrigerator that turns on and off throughout the day, or a washing machine where the power used will depend on what cycle is running. You can use the power meter to work out the usage over time, and the cost, using the following steps:
- Plug the appliance into the power meter
- Set the cost of electricity on the power meter to what you pay (see manual)
- Leave the appliance plugged into the power meter for the desired measurement time (24 hours, one washing machine load, etc.)
- Come back after the specified time and press the ‘FUNC’ button until you come to ‘kWh’ for consumption or ‘Total Price’ for cost.
Download your FREE guide from Steplight
You can download an up-to-date PDF which contains the above content here: Measuring and Monitoring Energy Consumption – A Practical Guide





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