I turned the toaster on. The meter jumped straight to 2,100 W. In the time it took to make my toast, the toaster used 0.04 kWh of power. Eeek! This was with the toaster set to toast the bread. For some reason, all toasters come with a setting to burn the bread to a horrible crisp that nobody would ever eat. We don’t know why…

(I was going to test it again, but — having already eaten the first lot of toast — I discovered that the bread is actually mouldy. Why do you always find these things out afterwards?? It’s like the old saying, “what’s worse than finding a worm in your apple?” To which the answer goes “finding half a worm”…)

Next I tested the electric kettle. And wow boy, 3,500 W, constantly! In the time it took to boil enough water for 1 cup of tea, it used 0.06 kWh of power. (It would have taken longer to boil if I filled it more, so presumably it would use even more power then!)

Hmm, I’m going to have to collect all this data on a single page…