Rick has an interesting post about his experiences measuring electricity use of various components in his home. I’ve been curious about this myself for some time, but haven’t had the tools or time to track it. I think I’ll pick up one of these usage monitors (like Rick did) and of course (eventually) report my findings. I’m thinking I’ll pick it up for the office, so it’ll be a business expense… Plus we have a ton of things using power at the office, including a fridge and a microwave, a projector, and of course computers, printers, etc. Be cool if this gadget logged usage to a memory stick and you could download it into Excel or something rather… not sure how advanced that end of it is, but I’m thinking not very.

One of the things Rick bemoans, which I think stinks and many others have also complained about, is the energy consumption of various appliances while they’re in “off” or “standby” mode. Hooking things up to power strips is one way to address this, but the convenience factor of getting to the power strip behind the entertainment center is pretty lame. Are there any remote controls out there for power strips to address this issue? I’m sure there must be – any recommendations?