How to cut your electricity use

Cypher

Jonesya wrote:

I've just bought an Electrisave - it gives a read out total power consumption for the house.

Cheapest I could find it for was £60 + £4 p&p from:
http://www.innocentproducts.co.uk/

Its that the same unit as the one posted by EdinburghKev ? Is it £60 inc Vat ?

http://www.electrisave.co.uk/ they are also £79.95 here

Madiba_2

Surely you can just read the meter?

Cypher

Madiba wrote:

Surely you can just read the meter?

The plug in one that Judith mentions is really useful to see how much individual circuits are costing.

I've had this one plugged into my PC since around 9pm. Its actually monitoring all of my PC equipment, PC, Monitor, Printer, Speakers etc and in 2.5 hours I've used 0.45 KWH. My whole system is only taking 177 Watts, which is much better than I expected it to be.

I pay over £120 a month to Scottish Power so it would be nice to find whats eating all money and be able to replace those items for cheaper alternatives.

My PC has a 500w power supply inside (and thats just the base unit), so I expected to find the PCs being a big part of my energy use. Finding the whole system is only drawing 177watts is superb. BTW I have 3 systems in the house that are on pretty much all night.

I will be taking the unit to work tomorrow to test it and check its reading correctly.

but for tonight the energy monitor will be left on the TV, Video, DVD and Cable box over night to see what they actually use in standby mode, they are all usually left on standby.

I think it provides useful info that the main meter couldn't possibly tell me and for £13.49 its well worth it in my opinion.

:beer:

Avoriaz

How much power and energy does your power and energy monitor use?:rotfl:

Do you need another power and energy monitor to monitor the power and energy usage of the first power and energy monitor. And then another one to monitor the second and so on.:D

This could get complicated.:p


Seriously, thanks for the tip. As an incurable gadget freak I am now off to ebay to buy one or two for myself.;)

Poppycat

I got one of these last year at http://www.tchibo.co.uk but they dont sell them now it was £6

espresso

Jonesya wrote:

Well yeah, but the Electrisave gives you a realtime readout of your usage (updates every minute)

Your electricity meter records in real time!

Jonesya wrote:

and because it's wireless you can put the display somewhere convenient so you can keep an eye on it.

So it's basically a remote reading of your actual electricity meter.

Jonesya wrote:

Plus with it being green it provides a good excuse to get another gadget!

If that is being green, I would rather stay red. I totally agree that the small plug in units are very useful for checking consumption and calculating the real cost of running appliances. The one sold by Lidl for £4.99 is excellent but I can't see anything green about these electrisave things, in fact they are a waste of money! You still need to actually read your gas meter.

:rolleyes:

Avoriaz

Espresso, I think the difference is that an electricity meter records total usage of electricity whereas the Electrisave tells you rate of consumption at any one time.

You can only get a vague indication of the rate from watching the spinning disk on the meter and who wants to stand in a cold garage doing that.

An analogy is a car speedometer versus odometer (mileage recorder). The odometer tells you your total mileage but you try working out how fast you are going at any particular moment from the odometer.:rotfl:

espresso

Avoriaz wrote:

Espresso, I think the difference is that an electricity meter records total usage of electricity whereas the Electrisave tells you rate of consumption at any one time.

You can only get a vague indication of the rate from watching the spinning disk on the meter and who wants to stand in a cold garage doing that.

An analogy is a car speedometer versus odometer (mileage recorder). The odometer tells you your total mileage but you try working out how fast you are going at any particular moment from the odometer.:rotfl:

Yes I have read the sales blurb but still think that they are an expensive joke marketed at the Geeenies with more money than sense!

The plug-in units are very useful in comparison to measuring the whole house consumption which is just not practical for checking individual appliances. You don't need to measure fitted lights etc. which use electricity at their marked wattage. The plug-in units can also be programed for different rates at different times i.e. economy 7.

hesmy

Working out individual consumption is not difficult.Every appliance has a small plaque giving the consumption in watts(W).A kilowatt-hour is just a kilowat (1000watts) burning for an hour.So 500 watts burning for an hour is half a kwh,burning for half an hour is a quarter,etc.

Cypher

They quote maximums hesmy. So thats not necessarily the case.

I assumed my PC was taking in excess of 500w when in reality it turned out to be only 174w.

I also wanted to work out what they were using in standby. This PC + printer etc is around 15w