Green Gadget Envy: The Energy Detective

I love my Kill-A-Watt. It's so fun to plug into everything in my home and monitor my electricity. But it has some limits: my recessed lighting can't be put to the test, nor can most of my large appliances whose plugs are unreachable.

Enter "The Energy Detective", otherwise known as TED. Simply plug this gadget into any free plug in your home, and it is smart enough to tell you exactly how much wattage everything in your home is drawing currently. You can play with it. Go turn off a light, run the dryer, turn down the temperature on your fridge, and get a feeling for what's using juice.

For a few extra bucks, they'll even sell you software to track your energy usage over time so you can find patterns in your power.

But with even the basic model topping out at $140, it's a bit too steep for most homes. Still, it's a great hallmark of energy monitoring technology still to come in homes.