A New Online Tool, WattzOn Uses A Different Approach to Curbing Energy Consumption

I found that the WattzOn website uses an odd measure of energy use which was not adequately explained. I eventually figured it out so would like to explain it here for anyone else who goes to the site and starts off as confused as I was.

Normally the amount of energy we use is measured in a unit such as kilowatt hours per day, month, or year. For example, the average household in Ontario, Canada where I'm from, uses about 33 kWh of electricity per day. That's equivalent to having two 100-watt lightbulbs running for 17 and a half hours every day of the year.

Watts is a measure of power (how much work is being done in a given instant) and kilowatt hours is a measure of energy use (how much energy is used over a given time period). I believe that what the WattzOn website should be measuring is kilowatt hours, because that's an easy-to-understand concept. Instead what they seem to be measuring is:

Total energy used, expressed as an average number of watts of power used every second of every day of the year.

Wattzon founder Saul Griffith apparently uses 18,106 watts (including his own home and transportation use, energy used to grow his food, as well as energy that government and other services he takes advantage of consume). That 18,106 watts is the equivalent of 181 light bulbs of 100 watts each, burning continuously on his behalf throughout the year. By multiplying this value by 8.76 we get kilowatt hours used, which means Mr. Griffith is using 158,608 kilowatt hours per year.

Since it takes roughly 0.8 pounds of coal to generate one kilowatt hour of electricity, Mr. Griffith is using the equivalent of 127,000 pounds, or 63 tons, of coal per year. That is an astonishing amount, and, I think, a much more meaningful measure than the number of watts.

Still, Mr. Griffith is onto something. I've been measuring my electricity usage, for example, with a Kill A Watt meter, which you plug into a wall socket. You then plug a device - a lamp, refrigerator, coffee maker, whatever - into the Kill A Watt meter, and it tells you how many watts of power the device draws, and if you're patient, how many kilowatt hours the device uses over time.

Using a home electricity monitor such as this makes a big difference to one's energy consumption. Once you know how much electricity you're using, you can see where it's costing you the most, and you can make changes to cut your use. In my case we got our family's electricity consumption down by about 30%.

There are obvious ways to measure one's energy use in other areas, such as keeping track of gallons of gas at a fill-up and miles driven since last fill-up; watching your natural gas meter or at least monitoring monthly utility bills; and so on. The point is that the more we observe our own actual energy use, the more we are motivated to take actions to eliminate obvious waste or overuse.

The great thing about sites like WattzOn (assuming they explain things perhaps a little more clearly) is that they can help people understand their energy use in general terms - especially things like the amount of government energy use they're responsible for (as an average). But they can't replace measurements made by the energy consumer themselves, and that's where the real savings are going to come from.