Plug-in Electricity Monitor £7.99 Instore @ Maplin

doozeruk

I have one from Maplin from ages ago.....I like them , no arguments just IMHO

I noticed my local B&Q also have them reduced from £24.99 to £9.99, I would guess this is nationwide.....not with electrical stuff, which of course is parse with B&Q, they were on the end of the plumbing isle :huh:

[Deleted User]

A very similar plug in monitor has helped me to hammer my electric bills down. If you haven`t got one and can consider getting one then do it. It is easy to calculate the energy cost of an appliance using a stable number of watts per hour but almost everything in the kitchen, in particular, varies wattage throughout the time it is being used and a meter is essential to get a true picture

A couple of findings: water for a pot of tea for 2 boiled in a kettle <1p
dishwasher at 50 degrees 15p (energy only! 4p for water plus cost of detergent to be added)

Woby_Tide

1carminestocky wrote: »

One poster advised me to put a plug on it so that I could use my Maplin plug in monitor but he really is VERY strange so I wouldn't advise it.

It's perfectly feasible to have certain ovens connected using 'normal' plugs as long as all the wiring and sockets are rated correctly

1carminestocky

Woby_Tide wrote: »

It's perfectly feasible to have certain ovens connected using 'normal' plugs as long as all the wiring and sockets are rated correctly

Don't know about yours, but my electric oven was professionally 'wired in' by a fully-qualified and accredited electrician when we had a new kitchen fitted, so I for one won't be interfering with it in order to plug it into a £7.99 usage monitor just to try and win an argument.

PS Not keen on the 'certain ovens' part, either.

mdolan

Woby_Tide wrote: »

no it wasn't thats why I added a smiley:rolleyes:

Doh - Yeah, I misread the intent. Many apologies for my sharp tone...

Cheers,
Mike

mdolan

D_Dickenson wrote: »

I was just talking with a friend yesterday how it would be great to be able to connect it to a computer. Please could you explain how you have done this - I can't see any connection outputs on my OWL receiver so I assumed it is not possible.

I use an RFXComm 433MHz USB Receiver connected to my server and then a little custom VBScript which reads the raw data from the OWL transmitter every 5ish seconds and puts it into an RRD database. This then generates the stats (hourly, 3 hourly, 8 hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly) and webpages which shows the usage.

The RFXComm receiver isn't cheap though - but it's part of an extendable system so for some people it might be worthwhile....

Cheers,
Mike

Woby_Tide

1carminestocky wrote: »

Don't know about yours, but my electric oven was professionally 'wired in' by a fully-qualified and accredited electrician when we had a new kitchen fitted, so I for one won't be interfering with it in order to plug it into a £7.99 usage monitor just to try and win an argument.

PS Not keen on the 'certain ovens' part, either.

Mine was installed and Part-P certified also so not sure what you were implying. I wasn't suggesting that you should change your wiring, just that your previous posting was casting doubt on the possibility of doing such a thing.

And by certain ovens, I mean ovens that won't exceed the rated load for the wiring in place. But thats for the electrician to make the call based on what they find. Some ovens won't because of the load required, many standard ovens will be able to. In most cases though the location of the plug makes it a pain to do it and will be the bigger factor in whether you could use a monitor, if you so wished. But it's an option which is what the original suggestion to yourself was, not a requirement. But as per previous advice, with something like the oven it's easier to use other generic monitors

Nilrem

mdolan wrote: »

And the plugin monitors are great for finding the individual power drainers. The plugin monitors are more accurate as they do measure voltage as well. I think they have a resolution of approx 3w.

Cheers,
Mike

IIRC the one i've got (an earlier model from Maplin) states it's accuracy is at a maximum of 2% out, typically 0.5% out, which is pretty good

It's shown me that going from a 28" CRT TV (about 150watts) to a 32"LCD has saved me about 30 watts, and that the new TV uses something around 1 watt in standby (after the first couple of minutes when it's 20 watts).

It's also fun/interesting to note that a PC with a 550 watt PSU might draw between 120 and 190 watts from the mains depending on what it's doing (idle it's lower, playing a game it's 190ish), and that's with 4 hard drives.
It's 20" monitor draws another 60 watts

D_Dickenson

mdolan wrote: »

I use an RFXComm 433MHz USB Receiver connected to my server and then a little custom VBScript which reads the raw data from the OWL transmitter every 5ish seconds and puts it into an RRD database. This then generates the stats (hourly, 3 hourly, 8 hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly) and webpages which shows the usage.

The RFXComm receiver isn't cheap though - but it's part of an extendable system so for some people it might be worthwhile....

That sounds a very impressive set up. I had a quick look on ebay for a RFXComm receiver but couldn't see anything. Would you mind providing a link to the kind of thing you are talking about - it sounds very interesting to me. I have a broad basic knowledge of computers and electronics - would it be something a layman could get his head round or would it be too technical?

Many thanks

Matt

mdolan

D_Dickenson wrote: »

That sounds a very impressive set up. I had a quick look on ebay for a RFXComm receiver but couldn't see anything. Would you mind providing a link to the kind of thing you are talking about - it sounds very interesting to me. I have a broad basic knowledge of computers and electronics - would it be something a layman could get his head round or would it be too technical?

Many thanks

Matt

Hi Matt,

The receivers rarely appear on ebay, however the manufacturer (I use) is here:
http://www.rfxcom.com/receivers.htm

Setup was easy. Just plugin and let USB detect. The supplied software is very basic, but it was enough to allow me to write my own vbscript which does the work for me.

An example output is here: http://osintot.dyndns.org/electrisave.php

I suspect this is moving off-topic for grabbits, but I'm happy to discuss this solution with anyone interested (although I'm definitely no expert!)

Cheers,
Mike