Energy Meters

Conserve Nova Scotia has been pleased to provide electricity-use meters in Public Libraries and Community College libraries across the Province.

These meters can be used to measure electricity use in most household appliances and devices. So just like a book, CD or DVD, you'll be able to borrow one of these meters from your local library.

Borrow this meter from your library to find out how much energy is being used by some of your household appliances.

Some things may even surprise you, as some devices continue to use energy even while turned off (known as phantom loads).

Understanding how electricity is used is an important part in taking steps to reduce overall electricity use, which results in lower energy bills and lower greenhouse gas emissions.

How to Use the Meters

The following are instructions on how to use the meter:
ConserveNS Instruction (pdf)

For further information, here are the manufacturer's instructions.
UPM Owner Manual (English and French)

Measuring Electricity in Your Home

The two most useful measurements on this meter are "watts" and "cost".

The following document explains in more detail what it all means.
Electric Meter Explained (pdf)

Calculating Your Energy Use

The energy meter can actually calculate how much energy is used by an appliance, and translate this into a dollar figure.

This is a useful tool as some appliances have varying cycles, like a fridge, so they will use different amounts of energy at different times.

However, some devices use a continual average amount of energy the entire time.

To figure out the cost to you for a full year in these devices, plug in the number of watts used, and the amount of hours per day the appliance uses this amount of watts:

Note that your appliance will use different amount of energy whether it's on or off.

For example, your TV may use 10 watts when it's off, and 40 watts when it's on.

If you watch an average of 3 hours of TV per day, then your energy use for the TV would be as follows:

Turned on:

40 watts/1000kW x 3 hours x $0.11796 kWh x 365 days = $5.17

Turned off:

10 watts/1000kW x 21 hours x $0.11796 kWh x 365 days = $9.04

This means that you're actually paying more to have your TV off! The solution is not to watch more TV, rather, it's to unplug the TV when its not in use.

Calculate Home Energy Costs

Nova Scotia Power has developed a calculator that takes all of your household appliances into consideration.

This will help you further understand how energy is used at home: Nova Scotia Power calculator.