How do I work out how much money my electricity meter is using?
The meter itself is probably using negligible electricity, and testing just the meter is rather difficult (would have to be removed with authorization, hooked up on a bench, tested, reinstalled, re-authorized). In Canada, I pay 7 cents per kiloWatt hour. The meter reads kWh, and the number it indicates is recorded monthly. The difference gets multiplied by $0.07, and that’s what I’m billed (plus taxes, etc). A “kilowatt hour” is the “unit”, here, so if I leave one 100 watt light bulb on for 10 hours, I’ve used 1 kWh. Likewise, if I leave ten 100 watt bulbs on for one hour, I’ve also used 1 kWh. On second thought, you could test the meter thus: turn off everything in the apartment suite (flat) – unplug even the fridge. Record the unit on the meter. With everything off, the disk inside the meter should stop spinning. Plug in and turn on only one 100 watt bulb, leave it on for an hour exactly (time it to the nearest second or so), and then turn off the bulb. Then go record the unit displa
