Using my new kWh power meter

I bought a single-outlet energy meter for $20 off newegg couple weeks ago, and it’s about time to take at the data. The surge protector connected to it powers pretty much everything required to run my computer, so even thought it doesn’t meter the rest of the household I can figure out the rest by estimation.

Attached devices:

• 4-port router
• 5-port switch
• cable modem
• 430W power supply for my main computer
• 130W 30″ monitor
• speaker system for our tv
• 2 laptop chargers

The reason why I bought was because on our last month’s power bill, my roomates and I somehow used $180 of electricity, up from $150 the month before. Including some mysterious “distribution fees” and using basic math, I found out that our electricity is costing us $0.24/kWh, $.07/kWh for the first ~200 kWh and $.10/kWh beyond that, kind of like how text messages start costing more if you use over 9000.

Meter Readings:
sample 1: 35.65 kWh/165 h = 0.216 kWh/h
sample 2: 62.28 kWh/383 h = 0.163 kWh/h
wattage: 298 W

Projections:
~$.072/h while in use
~140 kWh/mo for moderate usage
~$33.00/mo for moderate usage

I was using these numbers to compare with the costs I faced on the same month’s AWS bill. Seems like a virtual EC2 instance is only $.02/h more expensive, pretty worth it since all I’m getting at home is power, not hardware.

I wonder if I’ll ever be able to let go enough to run everything off my small laptop and save all files to an unknown location in the cloud?  My drives are getting old so I was thinking about it, but it’s still too scary having no physical barriers, all somebody would need is a few passwords to gain full access to all my files.