"I love my Energy Monitor – do you have one?" blog discussion

Former_MSE_Archna

Hazywarrior wrote: »

Hi Martin Lewis,

From what you've said it sounds like you've got an electricity monitor, not a smart meter.

Smart meters are highly sophisticated meters that accurately MEASURE your gas and electricity usage and communicate with your energy supplier - these will replace your existing meters, so will likely be stuck on a wall in a cupborad somewhere.

Electricity monitors are the simple handheld units that can sit on the table in your living room, with another bit clipping on to your existing meter. These just give you a good estimate of how much electricity you are using - they monitor rather than meter your energy use. (Handheld units like these may come WITH smart meters, but they are not smart meters themselves).

Are you sure the object of your love is a smart meter?

Best wishes,

Hazywarrior

That's fixed now (sorry Martin!)

elyobelyob

Personally, I think that everyone should get to trial one. You don't need to have one running all the time, as you soon learn what it is that you need to do to get to your base level. As you say, it's the conversion into pence and pounds that makes you think.

I want one that I can plug into my pc and download the data. I'd find that interesting data

persian_star

sly_dog_jonah wrote: »

If you pick a monitor that supports economy 7 then you shouldn't have any issues. I've just ordered an OWL CM119 for £29.99 which supports Economy 7 apparently, courtesy of Mr Amazon.

Hey, thanks for the recommendation, but it's the anomolies which would probably give us trouble! 1) we have TWO meters (go figure), one for each part of the tariff, which means we can't switch supplier (double grr) and EDF won't put in a new one (believe me, I've asked) and 2) our bizarre tariff counts the economy bit for a certain time in the morning, a certain time in the afternoon and then the bulk at night.

I might give an energy monitor a go if I can get a free one on promotion, but in the meantime I suppose what I'm curious about is which appliances use the most energy over an hour's use (the kettle, of course, if only boiled once in an hour is much lower than it feels while actually boiling it, and considering what it achieves is very cost effective). This way I can concentrate my efforts in trying to, for example, take shorter showers, with some data as motivational evidence

Hazywarrior

MSE_Martin wrote: »

You are quite right, and I had changed this in an earlier incarnation before the blog was published but frustatingly it seems to have gone back to the original version - will try and change it again

Thanks for changing this Martin.

There's a lot of confusion between smart meters and energy monitors and many people mistakenly believe they are the same thing (this is helped in no way by British Gas calling its energy monitor tariff 'EnergySmart'!) but you are in a good place to help clear up this confusion...

Numpty_Monkey

I got a freebie monitor, it was posted on MSE last year:T
.(and a couple of power saver plugs):D

They are a pretty good at giving an indication of what you are using
and they do make you more aware of usage :cool:
I'm not saying they ar accurate,
I just use it as an indicator:D

roddydogs

Idiophreak wrote: »

Can be false economy, I think...

My parents did this with their DVD players, telly etc...Which was great, saved a couple of quid a month...until both of their DVD players (£100+ each) died incredibly quickly. A lot of modern equipment just isn't designed to be hard powered off over and over again.

What, not even if the equipment is switched off first? i dont think he meant , say leaving the telly on and just switching it off with the remote control thingy

pennymakespounds

What, not even if the equipment is switched off first? i dont think he meant , say leaving the telly on and just switching it off with the remote control thingy .

***********************

No.. turn everything off and/or standy first

mystic_trev

Idiophreak wrote: »

Can be false economy, I think...

My parents did this with their DVD players, telly etc...Which was great, saved a couple of quid a month...until both of their DVD players (£100+ each) died incredibly quickly. A lot of modern equipment just isn't designed to be hard powered off over and over again.

That's a very good point. Most modern 'equipment' now uses very litttle power on standby anyway. I got my freebie NPOWER 'Home energy meter' yesterday. I've enjoyed playing around with it, and it's been interesting, seeing how much power things use. Will it change the way I use elecricity? I doubt it, as I'm always pretty careful making sure things are turned off when not being used!

Premier_2

I don't have one of these type energy monitors ... yet.

Was hoping to pick up a freebie somwhere, but as you say, switching to a tariff that readily gives them away will cost more than the cost of the monitor ... and I can't justify the ca. £30 to buy one.

Not sure if libraries have these type available? Anyway, I have a very accurate real time meter, albeit in the cupboard outside

What I do have, which I think would work ideally in conjunction with the total energy monitor, is a plug in appliance enrgy monitor.
The problem with the overall energy monitor is that is provide information on just that - the total energy being used at any given time (and perhaps over time); it doesn't tell you what is using how much. Only a plug-in type can do that for each individual appliance ... although it is obviously restricted to those items that are capable of being plugged in, so main lighting for example cannot be measured.

It surprised me. For example until I used it I didn't realise my computer, which I thought was off (not on stand-by, the standby lights were off) was still using a total of about 50w. Over 24 hours, that would equate to 1.2kWh, about 15p per day or over 2 quid during a fortnights holiday away!
Now it's disconnected at the wall when not in use.

These plug-in energy monitors are certainly available from some libraries, but only cost about £5 - £10 to buy, definitely worthwhile to compliment the total energy monitor if you are serious about saving energy.

loracan1

I got one of the free ones from my supplier last May. I'm still obsessed by it - check it most mornings to see how the day before has fared, keeping usage down to between 60-70/week compared to an average of 100/week before. Have lectured the kids about leaving lights on and having a display to show them seems to have drummed it in to them a bit more than me raving at them. Don't think it matters much if they're deadly accurate, if you can see a difference by switching something off there IS a difference.

Was checking it earlier when no lights were on and only the freezer humming, seemed to be using an awful lot, pulled the freezer plug out for a moment and still was on 0.05 - turned out to be the washer not being switched off - display was lit but not operating. Switched if off and dropped to zero. I'll be keeping that switched off when not in use now.

Premier wrote: »

The problem with the overall energy monitor is that is provide information on just that - the total energy being used at any given time (and perhaps over time); it doesn't tell you what is using how much. Only a plug-in type can do that for each individual appliance ... although it is obviously restricted to those items that are capable of being plugged in, so main lighting for example cannot be measured.

You can check how much one item is using if everything else is switched off or if you check it before and after you switch (for example) the kitchen lights on in my house. Shoots up because they're 4 x R80 100watt spots. That is probably the single biggest difference to our usage because they got left on everytime anyone went into the kitchen.