Photos: Green buildings for the rest of us

This device, the Kill A Watt, lets you find out how much electricity different devices around the house use. My 6-year-old desktop computer uses 125 watts, not including the monitor. So now I use my laptop more. There are a number of settings to tell you how many watt-hours you consume over a certain period.

This is hardly sophisticated smart-grid technology. But it's the kind of information that people need to make efficiency choices.