Sorting it all out and the Kill A Watt Meter?

Re: Sorting it all out and the Kill A Watt Meter?

Lexicon7 wrote: »

Hi guys, I now have the P3 hand held meter and became very puzzled when I first used it. Really not sure how to interpret the results. I have yet to get a lengthy read but would like to measure my BiPap Machine over the course of one entire night.
My system:
95 Lance Squire 4000 came with a Siemens SM55 small but very powerful mono panel and a very simple little ASC CC. One batt that is from Walmart but is doing a really great job for the time being. EverStart 94 109ah. I added a Wagan Tech 600W Inverter which I had in my closet for years and it is actually doing a great job... I will be adding a Trimetric batt mon and doing more upgrades as funds allow..

If I'm understanding your question right, here's what you need to do:

Plug Kill-A-Watt in, plug your machine into the Kill-A-Watt, and leave it for 24 hours.

The Kill-A-Watt will show you how long it's been plugged in and how many kilowatt-hours (kWh) your loads have drawn in that time. That's the number you need. On my Kill-A-Watt these figures are displayed if you press the red button marked "KWH / Hour."

Take the 24-hour kWh figure and multiply by 1000 to get Watt-hours. Then divide by 12 to get amp-hours @ 12V. That's how many amp-hours you'll be drawing from your 12V battery to run your machine over the course of 24 hours. This does not include the inverter draw---to measure this you'll need a different meter. I use one of these little in-line meters, which I move around using Powerpole connectors.