Unfortunately, the energy usage listed in the manual for pieces of equipment are often not the energy usage your piece of equipment will use in the lab in real life. Often suppliers test in perfect optimal conditions, and that’s just not possible in your lab.
To really understand how much energy a piece of equipment uses, it’s best to do an audit.
An electricity meter very inexpensive (~$10USD). It doesn’t have to be very fancy. Just set to zero and place it between the outlet and the plug. The cheapest ones don’t have any bells and whistles. Just go back after 2 weeks and record the number. If you have multiple, you can manually track over time, but if you can only afford one, 2 weeks gives you a very good indication and you can move the meter to measure something else.
There are some fancier ones with data loggers. For example:
HOBO (can be purchased at Walmart)
Kill-A-Watt (also available at Home Depot and Amazon) - Used at University of Colorado Boulder
Modlet - Used at Harvard
[Green Your Lab has purchased a range from Amazon. Will be testing them and reporting back soon. List any you’ve tried]
Considerations:
- Watch to see if your voltage/amperage is within the capabilities of your electricity meter. For example, the Kill-A-Watt one is best for small pieces of equipment (e.g. vortex or PCR machine).
- Does it have sufficient datalogging capabilities for your needs?
- When you pull it out of the outlet, is all data lost? (True for Kill-A-Watt)
Platforms
Fabriq
Other
Do a midnight/out-of-hours audit. This will allow you to understand what equipment or lights get left on.
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