Combined with a small spreadsheet, you will rapidly find out how much energy a device consumes on a yearly basis and how much it will cost you. It’s an eye-opening experience and in my case I made some immediate changes and commitments:

• An extra wireless hub that I don’t really use (because I just upgraded the main hub to 11n) consumed 45W. That’s about 400 KWh/year or $50.
  Action: Turned it off permanently.
• The stereo consumes about 15w in standby mode. (100 KWh/year or $18).
  Action: Installed a power ramp with an off switch to avoid standby.
• We have two old refrigerators that consumes about 800 KWh a piece on a yearly basis. A new one (that could replace both) consumes about 300KWh.
  Action: As soon as we can make up our mind on which model to buy we’ll buy a single new refrigerator.
• Standby on TV & DVD + dimmer controlled lamp consumed 25W (185KWh/year or $30). We have two of those setups in the house though.
  Action: In the short term we’ll just unplug them at night. Clas Ohlson resells a cool switch however that operates off the remote that will cut the power to the TV, so same comfort level as normal but it eliminates standby (why don’t the device manufacturers implement a more efficient standby mode?)

…and that’s just the beginning. So immediately we have shaved 850 KWh off our yearly consumption (which totals about 25 000 KWh including some heating)!

In Sweden the electricity meter can be bought at Clas Ohlson, but here is a similar one on Amazon.