Saving electricity with an OWL

markbloke

I'd like to make a suggestion. Those of us who have them should directly compare consumption figures on the Owl (or whatever) against the electricity meter in the cupboard over the course of say a week or even just a day. That should give us some idea of how much confidence we should have in the displayed figures.
Edit: A day is no good as my cupboard meter only displays whole kWh. A couple of weeks would give accuracy to the nearest percent.
Incidentally Cardew you fool, why on earth did you buy Betamax when V2000 was just around the corner? They gather dust twice as fast.

Woby_Tide

markbloke wrote: »

I'd like to make a suggestion. Those of us who have them should directly compare consumption figures on the Owl (or whatever) against the electricity meter in the cupboard over the course of say a week or even just a day. That should give us some idea of how much confidence we should have in the displayed figures.
Edit: A day is no good as my cupboard meter only displays whole kWh. A couple of weeks would give accuracy to the nearest percent.

Compare what accuracy over a week? Total electricity used? By everything or just a single appliance?

I'm not sure you thought this challenge through have you?

markbloke

OK I'll make it simple for you.
The Owl provides energy consumption figures for a whole house, not an individual device.
The electricity meter in the cupboard provides energy consumption figures for a whole house, not an individual device.
I am therefore talking about energy consumption for a whole house (a house is the big box thing you live in).

Assuming the meter in the cupboard is accurate, any difference in the two will reveal inaccuracies in the Owl (not the bird, the energy monitoring device).

I'm sorry I didn't think that through before - perhaps I should have drawn some pictures?

penrhyn

Unless something has changed the Owl/Electrisave/Cent-a-meter does not record the amount of electricity you use, it displays an instantaneous power reading.
Suppose you could note the reading every hour for 48 hours or so and compare what you get with your electricity meter but it would be both b*ll aching and inaccurate.

1carminestocky

Woby_Tide wrote: »

Well quite, but if you've needed to pay £35 to find that out then ........ Fact is you don't really need to tell someone "Don't leave the oven on 24 hours, it's expensive" or "if you have the shower on all day it costs more than showering for 5 minutes". If you are going to cook something or wash you've little chance of modifying that behaviour, it will happen.

giving someone the information that running a wash at 60 compared to 40 or 30 saves £x or how much each tumble dryer load costs or how much all teh devices in standby or PC's switched on use over a day without people paying much attention, that in my eyes is the sort of behaviour that is more likely to be changed by the average consumer.

As I said earlier I think they both have a use, but the Owl seems to be more about generating a "wow how much are using" response without actually providing much metrics on what is using it. The plug ins give more info on items that the majority may not be aware what they use(or as the common mistake seen here is that the rated use is constant and so get misled about what their main usage is)

The plug-ins give good info, certainly (unless it's a shower, electric oven or immersion heater, of course :rolleyes: ), their problem being it's not constantly staring at you in the face! An analogy for you: Back in the mid eighties we all heard about the terrible sufferring in Ethiopia, we read about people dying because they had no food. Terrrible. What motivated us to actually DO something about it (actually, Bob Geldof, to be precise)? Seeing Michael Buerk's harrowing VISUAL news report on the tragedy. Of course, people starving is a far more important subject than saving on our electricity bills but I'm just trying to make the point that homo sapiens are a naturally 'out of sight, out of mind' type species. We sometimes need a visual image to focus our minds. Plug-ins just don't do this (no matter how useful they are), a device like The Owl (And efergy and others) helps keep our usage at the front of our minds.

markbloke

penrhyn wrote: »

Unless something has changed the Owl/Electrisave/Cent-a-meter does not record the amount of electricity you use, it displays an instantaneous power reading.
Suppose you could note the reading every hour for 48 hours or so and compare what you get with your electricity meter but it would be both b*ll aching and inaccurate.

Really? That's a bit of a pig. I thought the Owl was like the efergy in providing historical kWh data. Looks like it's up to me then. I've logged data from both house and efergy meters this evening so we'll see how it develops.

1carminestocky

espressso wrote:

I see that the troll who publicly announced only a week ago, that he had put me on his ignore list, just could not resist reading my posts and trying to wind up Cardew again. Very childish, do you not know when to stop - no self control.

Next he will be posting that we are one and the same as he has never seen us both on-line at the same time. I ceratinly won't mind if you don't post your obsessive drivel any more.

Are you American? You don't seem to 'get' irony at all. You accuse me of attempting to wind up Cardew but persist in labelling me a troll and muppet :rotfl: Your post/s have now been reported for personal abuse. You suggested earlier you thought this thread had run its course (who made you a board guide, btw? ) but persist in posting in it, seemingly with the express intention of attempting to belittle other posters. I think that speaks volumes of you as a person.

PS I'm sure you aren't the same person but there are similarities in the way you both attempt to ride roughshod over other poster's views whilst attempting to belittle them as well. Knowledge is only worth having if you are willing to share it with others in a friendly/ non-patronising manner. I'm asssuming you live alone...

It appears to be not just me who is on the receiving end of your unpleasantness, either - your recent reply to poster Conor in a recent thread:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.html?p=12833295&postcount=10

Like I said before, you are deeply unpleasant and appear to have unresolved anger issues. Get yourself sorted out.

espresso

1carminestocky wrote: »

PS Nice to see the ignore list function works, I can't see espresso's post at all. :rotfl:

So having put me on your ignore list, why couldn't you simply leave it like that? No please don't answer that!

:rolleyes:

Am I bovered?



I hope that all of the other posters to this thread get a chance to read it, if it is pulled due to your childish actions.

:eek:

Y'all have a nice day now!

:beer:

Woby_Tide

markbloke wrote: »

Assuming the meter in the cupboard is accurate, any difference in the two will reveal inaccuracies in the Owl (not the bird, the energy monitoring device).

So after 36 hours, which is more accurate? The Owl or the electricity meter?