I'm a data guy, so it makes sense for me to think about tracking my data here at home. Recently I acquired two new devices, both of which I'll use in my Energy Updates here in the future.

The first was a Kill-a-watt, which is a device for measuring the power usage of appliances. I've been wanting to get one and finally decided to do it a few weeks ago. The plan is to test the power consumption of various things here, both while in use and idle, and then do some comparisons to publish. It makes me really wonder what the payback might be in unplugging things as well as switching to more efficient devices. Look for an update in April.

The second is a weather station. We've considered installing a windmill, and even though my neighbor has one, I'm not sure what the wind speed is on our property. So I have a La Crosse station that will connect via USB to my desktop and log the weather and wind here at the ranch. I'll likely get this into the update in June.