Replaced the plug on my microwave.

I should hook it to a power strip rather then unpluging it all of the time.

See in my extreme mental illness, I discovered a few years back with my Kill-a-Watt meter that my microwave uses more electricity sitting idle then actually cooking food. While I use it maybe two times a month, as I don’t eat processed or most packaged food, the thing is the microwave uses 70 watt hours a day just to display to clock or 2.5 kWh a month or 30 kWh a year. That’s a lot of electricity for a clock I never look at.

It turns out microwaves often use a tap off the flyback transformer to run the clock, and that’s a wildly inefficient way to power a clock. But America is a very effluent nation, so we don’t normally notice such waste unless you are severely mentally ill. Then it’s like a dripping faucet to see all this money flowing out of your pocket like a leaky faucet.

I’ve been doing this for about 5 or 6 years now. The energy saved is equal to about my monthly electricity consumption, but I don’t have a lot of devices I power besides a hot water heater, reifgerator, stove, and a cellphone. I don’t own a television and the last time I had my computer at home was probably last winter.

Was it worth it, considering the cost replacing the broken plug from the worn-out power cord from being plugged in and out constantly? Probably yes with current power rates – 150 kWh at a quarter per kilowatt works out to be $37.50 and the plug was $6.32 at Wally’s World.