which is best electricity monitor ?

pennymakespounds

trying to help a friend ...( have already got him moved to 3 yr fix with edf ! )

he has large 5 bed victorian type house .. undoubtedly far from "energy efficient" ... 4 young kids etc


his electricity bill is £1700 a year ! . ( gas similar figure .... House has gas heating & cooking)

so we're hitting the big things like ....

..... energy bulbs

...... not having underfloor heating on 365/24/7 !

......checking various fridge / freezer temps

......standby

not overly sure there's many other ways ..... but did make me think that he should get some sort of "energy monitor " gadget

we clearly need to try and see and understand where all the useage is happening .

i've only ever heard of "Owl" .. but thought best to come straight on here and ask all you MSE experts !

advice appreciated .

thanks

aeb_2

Could they not borrow one from someone for a week or two. I have an Owl, free with a promotion, and to be honest once I had used it for a couple of weeks I knew which appliances used the most (well it confirmed what I knew - but it does bring it home!) and now I don't look at it much.

The way it has saved me money is that just occasionally I'll take a glance and see and unexpectedly high reading and I can go and check what has been left on.

penrhyn

Why don't you just get them to read their meter weekly, log the results on something like imeasure, and turn stuff they are not using off.

All monitors are much the same, and none too accurate,some have USB ports.
Try to get one off your energy supplier for free.

bengasman

pennymakespounds wrote: »

..... but did make me think that he should get some sort of "energy monitor " gadget

Monitors are exactly that: gadgets; they won't tell you anything that a little bit of common sense won't have told you already.

victor2

pennymakespounds wrote: »

not overly sure there's many other ways ..... but did make me think that he should get some sort of "energy monitor " gadget

we clearly need to try and see and understand where all the useage is happening .

Not sure how much your friend will thank you for putting him onto EDF, given the latest reports of their lack of customer service....

However, I don't think EDF are currently giving away any monitors and they can be quite expensive to buy. As already said, they are not that accurate, but the freebie one I have does give a good indication of when something is using electricity of any significance and a rough idea of how much. To look at individual devices, you could consider a monitor which plugs into a socket and then tells you what any device plugged into it is taking. You can get them off your favourite auction site for less than a tenner. Only problem is they cannot tell you what devices without a plug on them are taking, like his underfloor heating I would imagine.
If he's got an idea of ways to save, get him to take meter readings at the same time each day while trying different ways to reduce his usage. Anything producing heat as a primary function, heaters, electric showers, ovens, tumble dryers etc. will consume a lot of electricity.