Going Green... Standby Power Conservation

Welcome to the Going Green... Standby Power Conservation group!  A Partnership with the Univ. of North Texas

This group is here to provide support for the Watts Up and Kill-A-Watt power monitoring hardware. Both are a great tool to teach energy awareness and conservation to students. It is also a great way to practice data acquisition and processing.

The Watts Up power meters are a fun and easy way to help teach kids about power usage. The devices monitor and record the power consumption of electronics plugged into the device. This data can be recorded over a period of time and then processed later, giving students the opportunity to learn about data acquisition and processing. The device offers several features, one of which is automatic calculation of total cost for energy used. Relating energy usage to cost may have a bigger impact on students, relating an unfamiliar concept to something much more familiar.

The Kill-A-Watt device is a simpler alternative to the Watts Up meter and may be more convenient as a take home project for students. The unit offers similar features with a slightly simpler interface. While providing most of the same capabilities as the Watts Up device, it does not offer remote access. The device is still a simple and convenient method of logging power usage over a period of time and can be a great teaching aid.

Please feel free to ask questions. We are here to help in any way we can.

Univ of North Texas: Institute for the Integration of Technology into Teaching and Learning has allowed teachers access to the curriculum materials, manual, powerpoint presentations on their webpage.

http://iittl.unt.edu/IITTL/itest/msosw_web/resources.html