OWL Wireless Energy Monitor - your findings?

Magentasue

moonrakerz wrote: »

You have hit the nail on the head there Sue - it is a (pointless) gadget. Do you need a £35 gizmo to tell you that if there is no one in a room, then you don't really need the lights or the TV on in there.!

Yes, I do. Being the lazy cow I am, I don't want to patrol the house every ten minutes. I like to look at the display from [STRIKE]my throne[/STRIKE] the sofa and summon my carbon fiends to go round switching off. It's this tactic that has reduced our consumption by two or three units a day. Would take three months to recoup the cost but worth it if it works for you. If it was just me and OH here, it wouldn't be worth having, but in our circumstances it has worked.

1carminestocky

Magentasue wrote: »

Yes, I do. Being the lazy cow I am, I don't want to patrol the house every ten minutes. I like to look at the display from [STRIKE]my throne[/STRIKE] the sofa and summon my carbon fiends to go round switching off. It's this tactic that has reduced our consumption by two or three units a day. Would take three months to recoup the cost but worth it if it works for you. If it was just me and OH here, it wouldn't be worth having, but in our circumstances it has worked.

Agree 100% with this. If I was a singleton living in a bedsit it would be the very last thing on my shopping list. But I live in a house with quite a lot of rooms and 3 teenaged kids (I actually only have 2 of my own but my eldest son's girlfriend has clearly decided she prefers our generally relaxed household regime as she's here 5 days of the week!) dotted around its extremities. They now know they can't get away with anything as I'm onto them WITHOUT forever barging into their bedrooms to check. Like you, it's paid for itself within a few months - not many gadgets can lay claim to that. It does seem the sort of gadget that provokes annoyance from those that haven't used it (or who's living arrangements precludes it from being in any way useful) but i suppose that's why it IS so popular - hard to ignore it even if you have no interest in using one.

PasturesNew

1carminestocky wrote: »

If I was a singleton living in a bedsit it would be the very last thing on my shopping list.

I am a singleton in a bedsit and I want an Owl. I would love to know how much it costs when I put my oven on for 50 minutes to make a home made loaf or heat up a pie (it takes 30 minutes to get up to full heat, then 20-45 minutes to cook one item). Because I am sure it is horrendous I tend to steer away from cooking nice/proper meals for myself entirely, microwaving noodles instead for 3 minutes in an 800kW microwave.

I have an economy 7 meter and it'd be a right royal pain to actually measure what I have going by popping out and reading the meter every hour and doing an Excel spreadsheet .. and hours of switching things on/off. I am sure a meter in your face makes you switch something off just because you can see the waste happening.

1carminestocky

PasturesNew wrote: »

I am a singleton in a bedsit and I want an Owl. I would love to know how much it costs when I put my oven on for 50 minutes to make a home made loaf or heat up a pie (it takes 30 minutes to get up to full heat, then 20-45 minutes to cook one item). Because I am sure it is horrendous I tend to steer away from cooking nice/proper meals for myself entirely, microwaving noodles instead for 3 minutes in an 800kW microwave.

I have an economy 7 meter and it'd be a right royal pain to actually measure what I have going by popping out and reading the meter every hour and doing an Excel spreadsheet .. and hours of switching things on/off. I am sure a meter in your face makes you switch something off just because you can see the waste happening.

A Remoska would be worth consideration. It can do just about anything an oven can do (including bread) and uses a fraction of the leccy. The only problem is the cost, they aint cheap but, apparently, Lakeland give a lifetime's satisfaction guarantee on them. As we are a 5 person family we went for the Grande but you *may* be able to get away with the mini, or cetainly the standard. We have cut our leccy oven use down from 7 days a week (often twice a day) to just twice a week.

Hattiehall

I have one of these devises which was given away by eon last year when I changed tarrif. I have found it extremely useful and have managed to drop our daily consumption considerably. With two teenage children in the house, I have been able to point out to them, when I come home and find all the lights balzing that we can halve the consumption by just turning off what they are not using.
I had no idea before what sort of daily consumption we were using before and must admit it was great fun at first turning everything off until it was nearly at nil and then running things such as the kettle, tv or even the clock on the microwave and oven. My 16 year old daughter now is joining in and turning off these items and only boiling the amount of water you actually need!
I have it plugged in the study near the front door and always check it before leaving the house. It has been brilliant as I know now aproximately what it should read during the day. If it is up, I go around and have found bathroon lights on ( 3 x 50w ), hair straightners, and once the iron. These otherwise would have been left on all day drawing lots of power or even being a fire hazard!
I have found the one we have to be quite accurate as it shows as you turn each appliance on and off, and you know by the wattage of the light bulbs that it is fairly accurate
I would agree with the last post about the Remoska, two weeks ago I bought the Grande. Our daily consumption for the two weeks that we have had it ( have only had the oven on once ) has dropped from about 12 a day to an average of 9 which is terrific, since last year in January our average consumpion was 17 a day!

PasturesNew

1carminestocky wrote: »

A Remoska would be worth consideration. It can do just about anything an oven can do (including bread) and uses a fraction of the leccy.

I've not really got the space for it. I've got a breadmaker that has to come out of the wardrobe to be used.

It's on the list of things to look into when I have a proper kitchen/house, just not now.

I am in furnished accommodation so I don't have to keep lugging things about if I have to move on.

Cardew

PasturesNew wrote: »

I am a singleton in a bedsit and I want an Owl. I would love to know how much it costs when I put my oven on for 50 minutes to make a home made loaf or heat up a pie (it takes 30 minutes to get up to full heat, then 20-45 minutes to cook one item). .

Surely the point is that an Owl will not tell you the cost of that process, or the cost of any appliance that has variable power or a thermostat - and that is almost everthing in the house except lights. - and you don't need to be an electrical engineer to know a 50 watt bulb uses - err - 50 watts.

At least the £6.99 Lidl power meter will tell you the costs of all plug-in appliances(but not oven and immersion heater)

You can, say, use it on your fridge and check how much power it consumes over a week at one temperature setting, and then check again with another setting. Washing machine at 40C and then 60C etc. PC on sleep or hibernate etc.

Obviously the OWL is handy to know if you have left something on, but not as a method of determining costs of appliances.

penrhyn

It would appear that the new one (CM119) is able to collect historical data, the accuracy would be dependent on the sampling rate.
The information on the feature is a bit sparse in the user guide, it looks as if you can only choose daily/weekly /monthly intervals.
http://www.theowl.com/resources/CM119_userguide-1.pdf

jasmin10

I've only had my a couple of weeks and I'm getting bored with it now

It is good to see what your using etc but once your are more aware there's nothing more to learn - perhaps it's just me.

Leblanc_2

jasmin10 wrote: »

I've only had my a couple of weeks and I'm getting bored with it now

It is good to see what your using etc but once your are more aware there's nothing more to learn - perhaps it's just me.

Despite this, it has already changed our behaviour. I would anticipate it will pay for itself quite quickly.