Recently I bought a Kill-a-Watt device to measure electricity usage, and I’ll be posting here periodically about what it’s teaching me.
True confession: We have a fancy Bunn coffee maker that keeps the water heated at all times so we can brew a fresh, excellent pot of coffee (into the dishwasher-safe thermal carafe) within 3 minutes.
We bought this coffee maker several years ago after very extensive research. It retails for almost $150; I combined rebates, discounts and credit card rewards to buy it for a net of around $50, and we have been thrilled ever since. Mr. Cheap is a serious coffee snob, and I must have my coffee HOT, so this has been a holdout among our wasteful appliances.
But thanks to Claire Walter’s question during the anniversary question session, I looked up its energy use and found that it uses 800 watts. Holy guacamole!
The electricity tally – before
I plugged the coffee maker into the Kill-a-Watt for 24 hours and learned that during that time period, the Bunn used 1.1 kilowatt hours of electricity, which (at our actual energy cost) would cost us about $50 per year. (For comparison’s sake, know that our refrigerator costs about $80 per year to run.) That is a lot of electricity for a daily pot of coffee.
Of course, we usually only brew one pot a day, during a set period of a couple of hours in the morning, so we don’t need a tank of hot water 24/7. So the last time we were out at our local superstore, I picked up this little baby:
It’s the simplest of the simple – a $4 manual timer that lets you stick in the pegs to tell the device plugged into it when to turn on and off. I set it to come on around 5:30 a.m. and turn off around 8:30 a.m. (for those weekend days when we might brew a second pot). Then I plugged it into the Kill-a-Watt for another 24-hour period.
The electricity tally – after
On the second go-round, while plugged into the timer, the coffee maker used .35 kilowatt hours, which will cost us $15.94 per year. That’s a savings of 68 percent. We can probably save even more by whittling down the time the timer is “on” — I’ve been clicking the timer to “off” manually when we are finished brewing.
Now we can have our coffee and drink it too.
The alternatives
Aren’t there better options for coffee-making, you might ask?
The alternatives seem to be:
- Traditional coffee maker. This site estimates traditional coffee makers at 900 to 1,200 watts, so ours is more efficient. The catch with ours is that its default setting is to run all the time. Otherwise, the usage appears to be similar.
- Manual drip coffeemaker. These are really inexpensive to buy and inexpensive to use — we could heat water with our electric kettle, which would cost about $3 per year for one kettle full or $6 per year for two kettles per day (a more likely scenario; our kettle has a relatively small volume). In addition, it would free up more counter space. On the down side, it means more purchases, more time required to make the coffee, and some kind of finagling to fit it with a thermal carafe for the super hot coffee I prefer.
- Espresso maker. We have a stovetop espresso maker that fits perfectly on the simmer burner of our gas stove. Making a pot of espresso takes about 10 minutes, and if we used this method exclusively for our coffee, we might make two pots a day, at a cost of about $7.30 per year. The problem is that I don’t like it as much as regular coffee. But if you do, good deal … except for the French press caveat.
- French press. We used to enjoy French press coffee – strong and hot! – but eventually the press became another gadget cluttering our small kitchen, and we got rid of it. Now there’s another reason to eschew the French-pressed brew: It seems that paper filters absorb oils that can cause blood health problems. So coffee prepared without a filter can raise cholesterol levels. (This applies to espresso, too, but not quite as much as to French press coffee.)
For now, I’ll stick with what I’ve got, and I won’t feel too guilty since we do purchase wind power and fair-trade coffee. Nevertheless, way to inadvertently crack the whip, Claire! And thanks for saving us $34 (and 220 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions) a year.
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Comments ( 5 )
This is so funny!!! My husband, W, is just now collecting data about our instant hot water thingy. It is a Japanese machine which keeps water hot all the time. Between 3 adults, we drink a lot of tea. However, W plugged the thing into a power meter recently and it was drawing 88W! Yikes. We found there is a timer on it that turns it off for 7 hours which I am sure will help. W is going to test that, too. Great minds think alike.
erin added these pithy words on
Jul 03 08 at
12:31 pm
I did serious research before buying my coffee maker too. After I finish a pot of coffee, I unplug the coffemaker from the wall to reduce my phantom load. When I want to use the timer function on the coffee pot, I put a note on the coffeemaker so my husband doesn’t unplug it by accident.
I’m a coffee snob too. When I first tried a cup of coffee I hated it because it was a supermarket brand that overprocesses their beans (and rarely pay a fair price to their growers.) Later on I tried a cup of Cuban coffee and I was hooked – turns out I like “yuppie coffee” which is OK by me because the brands I like are fair trade coffee. After visiting a coffee plantation on a vacation I resolved to keep drinking fair trade coffees.
I compost my coffee grounds and my plants love it. I also make quickie compost (if I don’t have a batch ready in the composter) by mixing coffee grounds and shredded paper junk mail into the soil of my potted plants. You can also just toss the grounds in your garden but I don’t do that because my dog likes to eat coffee grounds. Apparently he didn’t get the memo that caffinated coffee grounds aren’t good for dogs.
Condo Blues added these pithy words on
Jul 08 08 at
1:24 pm
Hi, my guy finally wrote up about our electric water dispensing pot. You can read about it here: http://www.liquididea.com/2008/07/saving_energy_with_the_zojirus.html.
Enjoy!
erin added these pithy words on
Jul 17 08 at
4:38 pm
When you are using the Kill-a-Watt do you find yourself adjusting your habits or are you using it the way you normally use it?
Josh added these pithy words on
May 31 11 at
3:06 pm
With the coffee maker, we definitely were just letting it do its thing. With other items (such as the laptop, the refrigerator, the TV), we just aimed to act normal and pretend the Kill-a-Watt wasn’t watching!
cheaplikeme added these pithy words on
May 31 11 at
4:11 pm
