The MS6115 Power Meter
I’ve written in the past about my Centameter – a great little device that tells me how much power the household is using at any moment. But its strength is also its weakness: while I can tell at a glance how the house is doing, its hard to tell exactly how much power a specific appliance is using.
The imaginatively-titled MS6115 power meter (pictured) solves this problem. You plug it into the wall, then plug the appliance you want to measure into it. The power meter then monitors the power running through and displays it on the inbuilt LCD screen.
This is fantastic for seeing the power consumption of smaller devices that just don’t show up on the granularity of the Centameter. The Centameter only measures to an accuracy of 10 watts, and my experience is that as the household consumption comes down, the less accurate it becomes. But the MS6115 measures down to individual watts.
Even better, the MS6115 is great for measuring the power consumption of an appliance that changes over time – something like a washing machine that goes through spin and rinse cycles for instance. The MS6115 can measure your appliance while it performs some task and you can see the total power used during that operation.
Its already turned up some surprises. Being an environmentally conscious person 
, I always turn our TV off on the mechanical switch at the front of the unit, rather than the remote. And I’ve been feeling good at hearing the mechanical “clunk” of the switch and seeing that red standby light go off – no phantom power wastage for me!
Sure enough, when I decided to measure the TV’s consumption when the unit was off, but the standby light was on, the TV was drawing 7 watts of power. Over a year, thats 61 KwH, or 61 kilograms of carbon dioxide emitted. (That works out to be around $6 a year in electricity bills too). Then I turned it off with its front switch and watched the power consumption drop to….. 7 watts.
Yep.
Turns out that turning the TV off at with the front switch gets the little red light to go out, and stops it responding to the remote. But it still drains 7 watts of power every minute of every day! The only way to really turn this TV off is at the wall!
I haven’t been around the rest of the house yet to see what other surprises I find. But clearly the MS6115 (however badly named!) is a great device for hunting out energy hungry appliances.
It’ll cost you around $30 – $40 (in Australia). I got mine from a mob called todae via mail order, but I’ve also seen it advertised at Jaycar. The instructions are minimal, but luckily it doesn’t seem to require much know-how beyond plugging it into the wall, so most people shouldn’t have too much trouble driving it. Highly recommended if you’re interested in cutting down on your household power bill!
Categories: efficiency, energy, environment, green, reduce
Tags: appliance, consumption, efficiency, ms6115, reduce
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December 16th, 2007 at 6:30 pm
[...] slowly been investigating the various appliances in my house with my new MS6115 Power Meter, looking for the worst “Phantom Power” culprits – those appliances that still consume [...]
January 23rd, 2008 at 6:02 am
[...] In that time we’ve discussed the hidden environmental cost with bottled water. We’ve looked at the lifecycle emissions of nuclear power, and discovered that calling it a “zero emission” solution is a bit of a misnomer. And we’ve investigated our household power consumption with fun tools like the Centameter, and the unimaginatively-named MS6115. [...]
November 25th, 2008 at 9:15 am
Nice review! I found your site while researching to write my own review of the MS6115.
Using it, I discovered that my old clunker beer fridge is using 2.5 kWh/day! Woah. I had suspected it was wasteful, but knowing the actual figures helped me to justify replacing it.
November 27th, 2008 at 9:17 am
[...] Low Impact review – a good review by a happy user. [...]
June 24th, 2009 at 11:43 am
Hi,
Can someone help me? I got this meter but the instructions are… scant shall we say
So what I would like to confirm from someone is If my power rate is 23.4 cents per kWh then do I enter in Price1 23.4 or 00.24 sorry I know this is probably a stupid question I just don’t know
Thanks in advance
bruce
July 9th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
Hi Bruce,
I’ve never bothered entering the cents into my MS6115 – I’m more interested in the power consumption, and tend to do the sums in my head to convert into actual money.
That said, it shouldn’t matter which one you choose. If you enter 23.4, then the cost will be displayed in cents – so a display of 250 will mean 250 cents or $2.50. Alternatively, if you enter 00.23, then the cost will be displayed in dollars – it should display 2.50 for $2.50.
I haven’t tried this – that’s just my guess.
Cheers
Dave
September 11th, 2009 at 10:21 am
I use a Power Meter myself, and it is really helpful because it allows me to see how much energy my appliances use so I can reduce my energy bill.
October 21st, 2009 at 6:58 pm
Just a little question which is not clear to me.
Over what period does the total price display ie adjusted per hour, per year, per day or just over the total on time sampled?
(BTW: City Software has these for $33)
Thanks
Murray
November 17th, 2009 at 9:13 pm
Guys have a life.. saving 6$ a year wow.. If u cant afford having a tv dont buy one…go back to the forest where no bills will get into ur mail
November 22nd, 2009 at 5:47 pm
Hi George,
Six dollars doesn’t sound like a lot, but:
– The savings that we’re talking about are easy, so why not? Flicking the power switch off on your washing machine isn’t that hard! After all, if you saw $6 in the street would you pick it up or say “it’s not worth the bother”. I’d certainly pick it up!
– Six dollars was the saving from changing my usage on one appliance. As I mention in other posts, I’ve found similar savings across a range of appliances. All up, it’s over $50 a year, every year. I’d rather have that $50 in my pocket than give it to the electricity company!
– for some readers, the incentive isn’t the dollars, but reducing their environmental impact. While some of these energy savings are tiny in a global context, if _everyone_ made similar savings it would really add up. It’s the same as voting in an election – one person’s vote doesn’t count for much on its own, but it adds up when enough people vote a particular way.
December 14th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
These el cheapo meters are horribly inaccurate, we measured all sorts of bizarre readings with the ones we tested. They seem to have huge problems with anything with a power factor that isn’t 1, ie any device that isn’t a simple resistive load. Switchmode power supplies and any debvice that is electrically noisy are particular problems. Inaccuracies of up to 1000% (yes, 10 times the real value) were seen. In particular, they were very inaccurate at power values below 20 watts, so they are actually not much use for measuring phantom power loads.
We used to sell this meter and had dozens of returns, they are just crap, really. The Power Usage Meter is much more accurate, but the PowerMate range are by far the best…
January 21st, 2010 at 10:19 am
The MS6115 seems to be an easy, cheap and effective way of learning about your appliances. Once you’ve gained knowledge about your energy usage, you could start using a meter that is a bit more advanced. It’s great for beginners and makes you conscious about your energy consumption.