Light wattage

I know I have shitty amazon lights,,, please don’t rub it in lol. I am just wondering if anyone knows a way to meter the actual watts that are being used with a multi meter? Or do I have to buy a fancy wattage meter like I saw on an earlier post? Or is this the best way to find out the true power of your lights?
I have also downloaded the light meter pro? Is that a more reliable method? I am planning on getting better lights now that I know I enjoy this as a hobby. But it’s like a guy going to play golf for the first time and buying a set of Ping clubs??? It just doesn’t happen often until he knows he’s in for the long run

Your best bet is to buy an "Amp clamp". To use a multi-meter, you'd actually have to cut the hot lead in the power cable, and put the meter inline on that lead. Here's an Amp clamp that also has a fully functional multi-meter built in as an example.

An Amp clamp is a meter, but you simply clamp around the entire cable (no cutting necessary), and it'll give you the current draw (Amps being used).

Then just multiply the Amps with the voltage in use (eg. 120V or 240V).

So if you get 5A being drawn by the lamp, and your lamp is plugged into a 120V outlet, the wattage used would be 600 (which is exactly what a 600W HPS lamp draws).

Thank you sir, I’m sure I have an amp clamp meter kicking around as well. Just didn’t know how to use it I guess

You could use one of those killawatt meters

spek9 said:

An Amp clamp is a meter, but you simply clamp around the entire cable (no cutting necessary), and it'll give you the current draw (Amps being used).

Click to expand...

You cant get an amp meter to read a whole cable because both sides of the circuit are in the cable. You need to isolate just one leg of the circuit. If you have both legs in the clamp they will cancel each other out.

Renfro said:

You could use one of those killawatt meters


You cant get an amp meter to read a whole cable because both sides of the circuit are in the cable. You need to isolate just one leg of the circuit. If you have both legs in the clamp they will cancel each other out.

Click to expand...

That's what I bought for my quantum boards.

If you want to use the amp clamp, you could take the cover off the receptacle, take out the screws that hold the receptacle in the box, pull the receptacle out to expose the wires feeding it. Then you can put the amp clamp around just the black wire feeding the receptacle, fire up the light on that receptacle and see what it's pulling. Just don't grab the screws on the sides of the receptacle or you will get shocked lol. I like to wrap the outside of the receptacle with electrical tape to cover the terminal screws.