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Tom has a new crush. It's called the WattVision Energy Monitor.

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Re: Tom has a new crush. It's called the WattVision Energy Monitor.

#21

Post by wesley »

covercash wrote: post #19
wesley wrote: post #7

Something like http://www.currentcost.com is much cheaper, has a one time cost, includes a display, and can send statistics to several user contributed apps as well. A new version is due soon which will _probably_ introduce wireless transfer to the pc and compatibility with google powermeter..

Does the CurrentCost unit have to be attached at the meter or can it be hooked up to the breaker box?

Quote:

"Take the transmitter and its sensor jaw to your mains meter; select the thick round wire from the meter that leads to your house. Ensure there is room around the wire for the jaw to encircle the wire and put the clamp around the wire."

Re: Tom has a new crush. It's called the WattVision Energy Monitor.

#22

Post by gridspy »

jodrellblank wrote: post #9
pkulak wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get a simple graph on my bill too. But this is real-time and instantaneous measurement. There's a bit of a difference.

"real-time" ish. I like the way they switch a light off, then stare at the iPhone for a few seconds to tell them it's gone dark. ;) Joking aside, I didn't know meters had "LED ports on them(IR?) and assumed these sorts of devices would have to be complex and measure current somehow. It's another place where I think "great, but I don't want it streaming to the cloud, can't I host it myself?". Follow up thought: I'll b…

There is a led on the side of many meters that flashes faster as you use more power. Usually it flashes 3600 times for every kWh, so if you have a small bar heater on (1 kw Load) it will flash once per second.

Watt vision counts these pulses. While keeping it simple, it does mean that WattVision is at the mercy of an existing meter to work.

Re: Tom has a new crush. It's called the WattVision Energy Monitor.

#23

Post by gridspy »

wesley wrote: post #20
dandelany wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're already very energy-conscious, I can see your point. However, most people probably don't think about how much power their standby (and operational, but unnecessary) devices consume. An analogy: I don't need Mint to tell me I waste money. Of course, I try to minimize the amount of money that I waste, but some is inevitably spend on stupid things. However, Mint is a tool that helps me identify exactly when an…

Well, I don't think those people would even buy such a device. Only people that are aware of their energy usage and actively want to reduce it would want a device like this. Of course if they got a deal with an energy supplier and got this installed for free in all houses it'd be a different matter entirely.

There are several reasons you might want live power monitoring:

If you insulate houses for a living and want to prove that the heater is switching on less often (paying off the cost of the insulation) you want live power monitoring on that one circuit. You can then correlate the power saving with outside temperature and time of day.

If you run office buildings, real time measurement can help you localise faulty HVAC units. It can help you find out when the lights are on and they shouldn't be. It can tell you that there are a lot of standby loads being left on overnight.

If you have a typical house and a huge power bill, you might not know which of many complex loads is using the most power. Perhaps it is standby devices. Perhaps it is lighting in the kitchen. Perhaps the fridge is leaking and turning on more often than it should. Maybe it is the hot water. Once you have localised the problem, you can make a smart investment to save power.

Re: Tom has a new crush. It's called the WattVision Energy Monitor.

#25

Post by wesley »

gridspy wrote: post #23
wesley wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I don't think those people would even buy such a device. Only people that are aware of their energy usage and actively want to reduce it would want a device like this. Of course if they got a deal with an energy supplier and got this installed for free in all houses it'd be a different matter entirely.

There are several reasons you might want live power monitoring: If you insulate houses for a living and want to prove that the heater is switching on less often (paying off the cost of the insulation) you want live power monitoring on that one circuit. You can then correlate the power saving with outside temperature and time of day. If you run office buildings, real time measurement can help you localise faulty HVAC…

In the typical case such a device is really only useful in the first month or two. After that all optimizations have been done. So I think that this monthly subscription model is a bit flawed in that regard. I'm probably wrong..

Re: Tom has a new crush. It's called the WattVision Energy Monitor.

#26

Post by F_J_H »

I work in the Energy/Utility field and just got back from a “Smart Gird” conference where smart meters (i.e. real time interval metering) was discussed at length. Although these types of devices are really cool to “energy geeks” like me, if you look at the energy used today at the author’s house, it amounts to less than a cup of coffee at Starbucks. So, the big question is, until electricity prices really increase (which would be a nightmare for politicians), will the average person really care? I love the device and think it is a great concept, but I wonder if it will have a very wide appeal.

Re: Tom has a new crush. It's called the WattVision Energy Monitor.

#27

Post by tomharrisonjr »

jodrellblank wrote: post #17
tomharrisonjr wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have tested the currentcost and it's a different thing in some ways -- WattVision has the distinct advantage of not requiring you to open the electrical box, for one, but also doesn't have a display (yet). CurrentCost is all about the monitor, similar to Owl. I think everyone is working towards some sort of online feed; TED 5000 has one that hooks to Google PowerMeter, but WattVision is a somewhat simpler and more…

Are you using less electricity to do the same things, or are you living differently in order to lower your electricity use because electricity use is in your focus? If so, would those changes be annoying to live with if you weren't so interested in your electricity use - if you tried to get a random person to reduce their electricity use in the same ways, would they say "sod that, it sounds too hard/stupid/cheap/comp…

This is a really good question. To be sure, there's a selection bias going on here, which I think explains why I have been able to reduce our household consumption by more than 50%, where in controlled studies (e.g. by utilities that have installed similar meters in their houses) observed reductions are around 15%.

But I would also say that I have done this over the course of several years, and while many reductions were ones I got with no pain or expense almost immediately, others were ones where I bought a new router, for example, that allowed me to get rid of my fileserver/router setup. I bought several BITS Smart Strips to reduce phantom load. None of these change my lifestyle in any way, but they do require some initiative.

Tom

Re: Tom has a new crush. It's called the WattVision Energy Monitor.

#28

Post by tomharrisonjr »

axod wrote: post #12
pkulak wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get a simple graph on my bill too. But this is real-time and instantaneous measurement. There's a bit of a difference.

In the UK you can get this from your supplier. They send you out a little unit that shows your current usage, cost etc etc.

I think the device is called "Alert Me", or perhaps they are using The Owl or the CurrentCost.

Re: Tom has a new crush. It's called the WattVision Energy Monitor.

#29

Post by tomharrisonjr »

jodrellblank wrote: post #16
wesley wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For this particular device it would mean that they would loose their monthly subscription (as I don't think people would accept to pay a monthly fee for a clientside app). This is their business model.

It seems terrible to have a device in my house measuring electricity (the meter), then put a reader on it, stream the data over wifi, over the internet, to a company with a bank of servers and several full time employees then process it then stream it back over the mobile phone network, all in the interest of saving energy.

I think the folks at WattVision would concur completely. It's kind of crazy, and the idea of Smart Meters would eliminate the light sensor and wire part of the deal. I would guess that WattVision and the others in this growing market are banking on the idea that 1) the electric utilities in the US move incredibly slowly, and 2) it's not just about electricity, and even if you got a smart meter for electricity, those of us who live in cold places tend to heat with natural gas and oil -- in my house our electricity use is only 20% of our total energy use (kWh of electricity compared to kWh of gas).

In other words, this market may be like the fax machine, which was made obsolete by the Internet almost before it was introduced three decades or so ago ... yet, they're still around :-).

Re: Tom has a new crush. It's called the WattVision Energy Monitor.

#30

Post by tomharrisonjr »

wesley wrote: post #8
breck wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> graph of your consumption for the last 12 months Monthly graphs would be somewhat helpful. For example, you could decipher that the AC uses a lot of power if the graph spikes in summer. Daily graphs would be way more helpful. For example, you can see how much you saved on a day where you were out and used no power. Hourly graphs would be still more helpful. If you knew you watched TV from 8-9, you could see the cos…

I don't need this device to tell me that standby devices waste power. Just install some power strips and turn it off completely. I don't see much other use for a device like this if you've already eliminated standby devices. Sure, it can tell you that your fridge is wasting alot of electricity, but that's what the energy labels are for (A++ etc)

That's what I thought too. I am very energy conscious. But I have been monitoring electricity for several years now, and I am still finding things that I can change. Often I find that my kids have left on the electric heat in the basement. I recently learned that I can do one dryer load with two loads of laundry and it takes only a bit more power.

I assumed there was no way I could use less electricity. I was completely wrong. Think of it more like a thermometer or a clock.

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