Anyone ever used this to monitor and control energy usage? I ordered mine yesterday and want to know if anyone has had good/bad experiences with the unit.
http://www.theenergydetective.com/store/ted-5000
Anyone ever used this to monitor and control energy usage? I ordered mine yesterday and want to know if anyone has had good/bad experiences with the unit.
http://www.theenergydetective.com/store/ted-5000
I borrowed for free a killawatt meter from my public library to measure most of my plugged in devices over a day or two:Originally Posted by stinsont
http://www.p3international.com/produ.../P4400-CE.html
I've left my house empty with most circuit breakers off for months on end and never saw saving in electricity to pay for that.. (during the winter my baseboards were set to 11 I think and even then I saved $100/month I think)
Google never ceases to amaze me though, seems like they're the only company out there with good intentions. This should be standard equipment on every house
Last edited by m3s; 2010-08-11 at 06:24 PM.
When everyone thinks the same they don't think at all
The unit cost me ~$250. The unit I really wanted was the emonitor but couldn't bring myself to foot the bill...
I agree with mode3sour.
I have tried many strategies in the past.
Including, but not limited to, exclusively drying clothes on a clothes line, not using A/C during summer, defering heavy duty consumption during off-peak rates, all energy efficient appliances and bulbs, etc.
The difference in bill $$ is minimal at best.
Part of the reason is that consumption is not the biggest component of the bill.
Delivery charges, regulatory charges, debt retirement charges and now the new HST on top of everything dwarfs the consumption charges.
Recently, our electricity rates went up.
With this increase it is pretty much futile to make above and beyond efforts to reduce the bill.
And now that the Canadian (and ONT) govt. are on a maniacal mission to replace all power plants with greener (higher cost) energy options, it is getting kind of pointless to undertake all these comical strategies to save half a Kwh a month.
You all may be right but I'm giving it a shot. The TED 5000 gets good reviews and includes a built in realtime webserver to help monitor usage.
The emonitor will actually monitor all appliances (circuits actually) and show you what each costs...pretty cool...and they claim to save between 5-20% on your bill.
I'm with Hydro Quebec, which actually has really nice monthly usage graphs alongside average temperature. A monthly graph is enough for me. It also has a detailed diagnostic tool that uses your inputs of house size and list of electric devices etc
I wondered why they encourage people to spend less on electricity, but I guess they've set up their billing so that usage has a minimal impact on purpose. They probably get a slice of profit from all the $$ light bulbs and programmable thermostats they encourage as well
That Google powermeter looks cool.. hopefully it catches on. I would like my phone to warn me if my house has no power when I'm travelling, or anything else unusual
When everyone thinks the same they don't think at all
Actually the TED5000 supports Google Power Meter. So even though my power company does not support GPM I can still use it - although I am not convinced it has much value...yet.
But all those charges are based on consumption, and not fixed. So lower consumption, lower overall bill. For Ottawa, there's only 1 fixed charge for hte local utility. In fact, the consumption is over 2/3rd of hte cost on consumption, so I'm not sure what numbers you're thinking of:
https://www.hydroottawa.com/resident...emplate_id=118
True that all those charges are based on consumption.
Some components of the charges are fixed though, like part of delivery charges, even with zero consumption.
However, the $ amount of consumption is less than the $ amount of these charges.
I'm all for reducing waste like turning off lights & TV, and grabbing the low-hanging fruits of efficiency like doing laundry on the weekends, etc.
I don't think anyone will disagree with that.
But once you have optimized all that you can, the $ benefits of any further reductions are marginal.
My June bill summary (rounded to nearest whole number):For Ottawa, there's only 1 fixed charge for hte local utility. In fact, the consumption is over 2/3rd of hte cost on consumption, so I'm not sure what numbers you're thinking of:
Consumption : $26
Delivery : $25
Regulatory : $4
ONT Debt Retirement : $3
Total : $58
% of Consumption : 26/58 = 44%
Once you add in the newly increased taxes, the % of consumption reduces even further, to more like 40%.
Actually, the % of consumption vis-a-vis other components may depend on the tier that the bulk of your consumption falls into.
The delivery charges are the same, regardless of the tier.
Part of delivery charges as fixed as well, and part is variable.
So if the majority of your consumption is low tier, then consumption reduces but other charges stay the same, skewing the %.
Similarly, on the other end of the tier.
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