How can I find out how much power appliances use?

zeupater

GreenBo wrote: »

I was the same as Ziggy. I was googling Smappee to try to connect to some users out there as they were few and far between. A lot more now though. Which is why this was the only thread I've been interested in.

To give some more feedback, as I've had it for a while now.

Accuracy, compared to my billing meter each month is +/- 0.5%

I would estimate that it detects the appliances in my home which make up about 90% of the energy cost.

Sometimes Smappee gets confused between different things but in the main I'd say it's OK. I think someone mentioned 75% success rate - I think that's about right but I haven't done any detailed analysis on that yet.

The comfort plugs work great, nice and simple, but I've only managed to find a home for one of them, which is on the plug strip for the home entertainment stuff e.g. Sky, TV, Xbox, DVD player. I scheduled it so it turns off at night and in the day when I'm at work. Calculated a £35 annual saving. OK... it's not going to get the kids through college but the plug only cost me £10 so it all helps.

A tip to any other users out there. Don't do what I did and put one of the Comfort Plugs on the broadband router :rotfl: I thought it would be a good idea to also switch it off at night and while I'm at work as it seems to use a bit of needless power, but when I did.... the Smappee couldn't get internet access. DOH!!

Has anyone out there tried connecting it to any IFTTT channels yet? if so, how and what?

Hi

£35/year savings is great, but I'd guess that it's only be possible if you don't already have a cheaper monitor and take energy awareness seriously.

What does £35 represent? ... well, quite roughly, drawing 1W for a whole year costs £1 .... so we're really talking about a 35W continuous load, or when realistically allowing for normal usage times (say 1/3) then somewhere around a 50W base-load saving .....

Now, without the ability to use my smartphone to remotely switch appliances on/off, I have 2 options ... firstly to leave them in standby, or switch them off at the wall. In standby our main TV consumes 0.3W, probably less than one of the remotely switched plugs (which I can't find a power spec for), so I can leave it on to record what it wants and switch everything else off at the wall ... so where's the saving ? ...

Now, occasionally MrsZ points out that one of the lights has been left on downstairs. My options don't include the use of a smappee (even if I had one), so I have the option of leaving a ~6W LED bulb on overnight, or doing the right thing and walking about 20 yards to atone for being a little forgetful .... probably does me a little good - gaining some exercise and prompting me to try not to do it again (as if ! ) .... even if it could switch off a 6W light at the wall, ~£10/node would be a little difficult to justify against any possible saving ...

So, with high efficiency products combined with a much cheaper monitor and using a little intellect we already achieve what the smappee claims to do, whilst saving the 2W(?) it consumes as well as whatever all of the remote plugs would use(~1W each ?) ...

If we were to spend £200-£300 on one of these, there would need to be a really good reason ... conditional appliance switching wouldn't really be enough, it would need to be able to act as a full home automation system ... now conditional control of something useful such as programmable IR senders and it's a different case, but .....

HTH
Z

GreenBo

zeupater wrote: »

Hi

£35/year savings is great, but I'd guess that it's only be possible if you don't already have a cheaper monitor and take energy awareness seriously.

What does £35 represent? ... well, quite roughly, drawing 1W for a whole year costs £1 .... so we're really talking about a 35W continuous load, or when realistically allowing for normal usage times (say 1/3) then somewhere around a 50W base-load saving .....

Now, without the ability to use my smartphone to remotely switch appliances on/off, I have 2 options ... firstly to leave them in standby, or switch them off at the wall. In standby our main TV consumes 0.3W, probably less than one of the remotely switched plugs (which I can't find a power spec for), so I can leave it on to record what it wants and switch everything else off at the wall ... so where's the saving ? ...

Now, occasionally MrsZ points out that one of the lights has been left on downstairs. My options don't include the use of a smappee (even if I had one), so I have the option of leaving a ~6W LED bulb on overnight, or doing the right thing and walking about 20 yards to atone for being a little forgetful .... probably does me a little good - gaining some exercise and prompting me to try not to do it again (as if ! ) .... even if it could switch off a 6W light at the wall, ~£10/node would be a little difficult to justify against any possible saving ...

So, with high efficiency products combined with a much cheaper monitor and using a little intellect we already achieve what the smappee claims to do, whilst saving the 2W(?) it consumes as well as whatever all of the remote plugs would use(~1W each ?) ...

If we were to spend £200-£300 on one of these, there would need to be a really good reason ... conditional appliance switching wouldn't really be enough, it would need to be able to act as a full home automation system ... now conditional control of something useful such as programmable IR senders and it's a different case, but .....

HTH
Z

Hi Z

I think it's probably fair to say you're probably on top of your energy costs so something like Smappee won't help. I'm simply not like you. I tried to be on top of it all the time but maybe got lazy along the way, remembering to switch everything off all the time at the wall. I know my Mum does this like a religious act so not sure what happened to me. One of the problems I've got with the stuff in the lounge is that the power strip socket is way down at the back of the cabinet, a real back twister to reach. I know that should be know excuse but... it is, it's an effort. I measured it with both Smappee and a free socket meter I got from the energy saving trust (at least I think that's where I got it from) and, from memory, it said around 20W before it all gets automatically switched off. You better check my maths to make sure that £35 is right.

I know that I can set Smappee to switch the Comfort Plugs off/on if it detects my phone (or wifes) is with a certain distance of the house. Rather than setting it to a simple on/off schedule but I just haven't tried that yet. In fact there's a load of the control aspects I haven't tried yet, just not got the time....yet. I'll get there.

Also, mine cost £170 not £200-£300, unless they've seriously gone up since I bought one.

What's 'programmable control with IR sensors'? how do they work and what's the benefit? I'm going to go to the Ideal Home show next year to see what's the latest in all this stuff.

GreenBo

ziggys101 wrote: »

Those details are on the device see below:
Instantaneous values:
voltage=245.9 Vrms
FFTComponents:
Phase 1:
current=2.783 A, activePower=646.8 W, reactivePower=223.967 var, apparentPower=684.479 VA, cosfi=94, quadrant=0, phaseshift=0.0, phaseDiff=0.0

Hey Ziggy

Where did you find that info? I can't find it anywhere in the App. Also, have you found any good forums with some active Smappee users yet? I found their Facebook forum but I want one that's independent of the manufacturers moderators so I can get a little bit more subjective feedback and help on what others have done. Have you used the new IFTTT feature yet?

zeupater

GreenBo wrote: »

Hi Z

I think it's probably fair to say you're probably on top of your energy costs so something like Smappee won't help. I'm simply not like you. I tried to be on top of it all the time but maybe got lazy along the way, remembering to switch everything off all the time at the wall. I know my Mum does this like a religious act so not sure what happened to me. One of the problems I've got with the stuff in the lounge is that the power strip socket is way down at the back of the cabinet, a real back twister to reach. I know that should be know excuse but... it is, it's an effort. I measured it with both Smappee and a free socket meter I got from the energy saving trust (at least I think that's where I got it from) and, from memory, it said around 20W before it all gets automatically switched off. You better check my maths to make sure that £35 is right.

I know that I can set Smappee to switch the Comfort Plugs off/on if it detects my phone (or wifes) is with a certain distance of the house. Rather than setting it to a simple on/off schedule but I just haven't tried that yet. In fact there's a load of the control aspects I haven't tried yet, just not got the time....yet. I'll get there.

Also, mine cost £170 not £200-£300, unless they've seriously gone up since I bought one.

What's 'programmable control with IR sensors'? how do they work and what's the benefit? I'm going to go to the Ideal Home show next year to see what's the latest in all this stuff.

Hi

... If you're using 20W with items in standby then there's probably an issue with the age of what you've got (or there's a power factor issue) ...

Regarding the cost, £170 just about covers the main unit, therefore there's the issue of £60 per six-pack of controllable sockets - and you'll probably need at least 2 packs if you're a serious techno-geek.

Regarding the IR, that's just an example. Simply offering plug-in adaptor sockets isn't going to get anyone serious about home automation to get excited whereas integration with existing standards & equipment could. There are many (quite cheap) IR remote controlled devices already available ... light switching/dimming, sockets etc .... where something like the ITTT logic in the smappee would be useful if it could be interfaced. All that would be needed would be an IR sender/receiver unit which can learn a number of signals and then transmit them on command (similar to a universal remote control) and conversely, pass query results back for ITTT logic processing ...

... now, something like £170 would be a better investment in technology which could do that and I'd be pretty certain that a decent sized market would already exist .... so when it's ready to test perhaps the potential manufacturer will send me a pm and invite me onto their development/trials program .... ....

HTH
Z

McScrooge

After a month trialling the Smappee, I just posted a review on my blog. Hope you find it useful!

Http://alphaefficiency.com/smappee-review

zeupater

McScrooge wrote: »

After a month trialling the Smappee, I just posted a review on my blog. Hope you find it useful!

http://alphaefficiency.com/smappee-review

Hi McScrooge

Thanks for the link, it pretty much reads as expected - apart from the analytics being even more basic than I would have envisaged.

Regarding the saving ... with the currently accepted 'standard' average electricity usage for dual fuel households in the UK being 3300kWh/year (I expect a downward re-evaluation soon(ish)) , the claimed percentage saving would represent ~400kWh, therefore at your tariff (~14.2p/kWh) the average household would save close to £57, representing a payback of ~3 years (169/57), but only if 12% could be achieved.

Leaving all of the automation aside, which undoubtedly most would do, we're really looking at using a comparatively expensive unit to do what a simple 'whole house' monitor and a plug-in single appliance unit could achieve for about a quarter of the price ..... education. The problem with any of these units is that people initially love them, then get bored - it's human nature - all you can hope for is that a general perception of how to achieve a reasonable level of energy saving becomes second nature before the boredom stage is reached ....

Automation should be the goal, however your own example using 60W lightbulbs highlights a pretty severe limitation (whether intentional, or not) in that there's no control of a light switch ... then there's another issue in that you can replace the 60W light bulb with a cfl for around £1, or with a LED for ~£5, thus saving whenever it's on, including when it's on by mistake!

Manufacturers & retailers of these types of devices have a definite interest in catching the customer before any energy savings are attempted and therefore inflating the potential and justifying a high price. Generally (:D), anyone with enough technical ability to unbox one of there items and plug it in should have enough intelligence to realise that a 6.5W light bulb consumes less energy than a 60W one and replacing a 300W Plasma TV with a 50W LED unit provides a huge saving, so why does anyone need to spend any money at all until all of the 'low hanging fruit' has already been addressed ... then what happens to the payback calculation ? ...

HTH
Z

GreenBo

Thanks Scrooge that was a good review, do you do that for a living? Your experience is pretty much the same as mine even down to point about the control plugs. I've only managed to find a practical use for one (which came with the Smappee). I can't see where or why anyone would want more, most other plug load devices I've got around the house after the one's I've already grouped together in the lounge are on/off anyway (e.g. kettle, hoover, hairdryer etc) so to have a plug controller on them doesn't make sense. At least for me anyway.

Z - That 20W is made up of the following on a plug strip - TV, Xbox, DVD player, Sky box and a network extending plug thingymjob from D-link. In my house I couldn't find any practical use for more than one control plug so for me I'm done at £170. I think more plugs than that and people should think more like you and be more pro-active in switching things off at the wall. Some of the savings for Smappee for me came from making things visible for me e.g. my outside security light was coming on constantly in the day, for long periods of time, even though it has a light sensor on it (I think it has a 150W bulb in it), so I replaced it with a new one. Also, it educated me that when we have a power cut or a fuse trips, which seems to have more often than it should in my house, my bathroom underfloor heating looses it's program and started coming on constantly at a low level (probably should have bought a better quality one in the first place :rotfl:). I've still yet to get my head around the IFTTT stuff but I'm going to read into it soon.

McScrooge

Glad you enjoyed the review - No, I don't review for a living although I do write them from time to time for Alpha Efficiency.

One area where I did find the Smappee more helpful than "whole house" monitors was for raising awareness of individual "power hungry" appliances. I was surprised to realise my shower was the biggest offender, for example (I shouldn't have been - it's obvious when you think about it, but there you go).

I have an Efergy Elite wireless monitor that sits on the cupboard and I have found it to be less reliable than the Smappee. Also, the added convenience of having the app on my phone did keep the energy tracking more to front of mind.

May not justify the price, but worth bearing in mind!

ziggys101

GreenBo wrote: »

Hey Ziggy

Where did you find that info? I can't find it anywhere in the App. Also, have you found any good forums with some active Smappee users yet? I found their Facebook forum but I want one that's independent of the manufacturers moderators so I can get a little bit more subjective feedback and help on what others have done. Have you used the new IFTTT feature yet?

Sorry only just seen this

In your browser enter your smappee IP Address/smappee.html for example 192.168.1.2/smappee.html

The password is admin

dmworking247

GreenBo wrote: »

The Smappee device was the only home energy monitor I could find on the market that continually measured the voltage and used it to calculate kWh, like my utility meter does, taking into account the power factor and everything. I got educated on all this when I tried to argue with my utility that my bill was way wrong - only to be told, by an electrician friend of mine, that my 'old' home energy monitor could be about 10% inaccurate,

Hi all, I'm new to this site but have been digging around for information about solar and energy meters for months.

I've just now made the choice to install a 5.5kw solar system with a 3-phase inverter into my 3-phase grid connection.

The subject of monitoring though has been driving me insane. There seems to be an unacceptable down side (accuracy, convenience, or cost) to every option I look at.

Today I've been reading a lot more about Smappee which seems to still be a very new product to the Australian market so there's not much feedback.

These posts which suggest Smappee somehow has the upper hand on accuracy due to measuring voltage (whereas other clip-on solutions do not), is VERY intriguing and may make the high cost of this particular monitor worthwhile.

My primary need is not really at a device level. My priority is having a simple display in the kitchen for my family to be more aware of the DELTA between our current solar production and energy use, to determine how much energy we are buying or how much energy we have to spare.

Devices like 'wattson plus solar' have the best display for my needs, but is reputed to be inaccurate, particularly with 3-phase installations. Devices like Watts Clever on the other hand lose points for their limited display and 'cloud integration'.

Ideally I would get something with 'reasonable indicative accuracy' and a good free-standing display. App level control and/or integration with tracking services like pvoutput.org are a bonus but not essential.

I'm really interested to hear more experiences with Smappee, anyone who knows of options to simplify the constant display of the data (an smartphone stuck on the wall??), or who can validate these claims of Smappee being accurate due to measuring voltage (how?).

Thanks in advance!