Making breakfast has become a full-scale production. Now I need tools, a modified extension cord, and my wits about me, all before coffee.
Here's what I found when I tried to calculate the power that went into cooking my breakfast at work this morning:
I used about 0.03562 kWh to toast an English muffin, and another 0.0091 kWh to brew my coffee (PBS blend).
And here's how I measured it:
The multimeter that I'm using has a clamp-on ammeter, which measures the strength of a flow of electrons (better known as electrical current).
When you press down on a toaster lever, electrons travel from the wall socket, along a wire, through the filament in the toaster (heating the muffin), and along a second wire, back to the socket. To read the current, I had to place the ammeter's jaws around one of the wires.
But my toaster cord, like yours (feel free to go check), has the two wires stuck together as a single cord, and I couldn't really splice the cord on the toaster at work. So I cut apart an extension cord and plugged the toaster into that instead.
*(Electrocution alert: A number of people walked by my desk, wide-eyed, as I split the extension cord. I suspect they thought it was plugged in. It wasn't. I don't want to die. Don't you do that either. And if you're playing along at home and you hit a wire, toss the cord and get a new one. I ruined one extension cord and feel little to no shame.)*
The ammeter measurement on the toaster came to 6.25 amps. I multiplied this by the voltage (120 volts is standard for a wall socket in North America) to get the watts reading: 750 watts.
Toasting took 171 seconds.
So I used 35.62 watt-hours (0.03562 kilowatt-hours) to brown an English muffin.
I calculated the numbers for the coffee the same way.
On a related note, you have to get up pretty early if you want to measure and chart the power used by all your household appliances before making it in to work. In other words, I haven't quite finished the diagram I wrote about making last post.
Next time: The disappointing tale of how much power my laptop uses, even when it's on standby, and thoughts on "green computing". Check out the story our designer just sent me.
Here's what I found when I tried to calculate the power that went into cooking my breakfast at work this morning:
I used about 0.03562 kWh to toast an English muffin, and another 0.0091 kWh to brew my coffee (PBS blend).
And here's how I measured it:
The multimeter that I'm using has a clamp-on ammeter, which measures the strength of a flow of electrons (better known as electrical current).
When you press down on a toaster lever, electrons travel from the wall socket, along a wire, through the filament in the toaster (heating the muffin), and along a second wire, back to the socket. To read the current, I had to place the ammeter's jaws around one of the wires.
But my toaster cord, like yours (feel free to go check), has the two wires stuck together as a single cord, and I couldn't really splice the cord on the toaster at work. So I cut apart an extension cord and plugged the toaster into that instead.
*(Electrocution alert: A number of people walked by my desk, wide-eyed, as I split the extension cord. I suspect they thought it was plugged in. It wasn't. I don't want to die. Don't you do that either. And if you're playing along at home and you hit a wire, toss the cord and get a new one. I ruined one extension cord and feel little to no shame.)*
The ammeter measurement on the toaster came to 6.25 amps. I multiplied this by the voltage (120 volts is standard for a wall socket in North America) to get the watts reading: 750 watts.
Toasting took 171 seconds.
So I used 35.62 watt-hours (0.03562 kilowatt-hours) to brown an English muffin.
I calculated the numbers for the coffee the same way.
On a related note, you have to get up pretty early if you want to measure and chart the power used by all your household appliances before making it in to work. In other words, I haven't quite finished the diagram I wrote about making last post.
Next time: The disappointing tale of how much power my laptop uses, even when it's on standby, and thoughts on "green computing". Check out the story our designer just sent me.
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