Power Meter in Aldi next Sunday

Poppycat

Aldi have these on offer from Sunday 23rd always a popular gadget to get on here

http://uk.aldi.com/sunday_special_bu...pid_57990.html



How much electricity do your home appliances use? This handy device measures electricity consumption so you know how much money the appliance costs to run.

• LCD display shows consumption in kW, amps, volts
• See how much an appliance costs to run by inputting up-to-date £/unit information
• 2 prices can be set per kW/hr (standard or economy/night saver)

lil_me

Will see if they have some in when I go on the Monday, sick of arguing with my partner how much electricity the 'club stuff' is using which we get no help towards costs with (must be something as that's the only thing extra we're running and my electric bill has gone up £30 a month!!!!)

wacko911

They aint cheap but we have a meter called electricsave (b&Q have them or fleabay +£50).
They connect up to the mains coming in to the house with a plastic clip (takes about 10 seconds) and then tell you in pence how much electric you are using at any give moment.

Its wireless so you can go round switching things on and off and seeing excatly how much they cost, and even glance at it when you leave the house to make sure you didnt miss something.

A saving of just 1 penny an hour over a year = ~£90 so if you switch power hungary things off it will pay for itself in no time. My online UPS was costing about £120 a year to run!!! My house alarm is about £80 a year, PC about £130... its quite scary when those pennys add up.

Cardew

wacko911 wrote: »

They aint cheap but we have a meter called electricsave (b&Q have them or fleabay +£50).
They connect up to the mains coming in to the house with a plastic clip (takes about 10 seconds) and then tell you in pence how much electric you are using at any give moment.

Its wireless so you can go round switching things on and off and seeing excatly how much they cost, and even glance at it when you leave the house to make sure you didnt miss something.

A saving of just 1 penny an hour over a year = ~£90 so if you switch power hungary things off it will pay for itself in no time. My online UPS was costing about £120 a year to run!!! My house alarm is about £80 a year, PC about £130... its quite scary when those pennys add up.

I am sorry but this is totally misleading.

The the advantages/disadvantages of of the Electrisave have been covered extensively on MSE.

Nearly all the 'power hungry' devices have a thermostat or variable power.

Just take your fridge for example. The thermostat switches on and off as the temperature is reached. If the compressor is, say, 500w*, using the electrisave will show it as using 5p an hour(taking a nominal 10p/kWh) or nothing. If you use 5p or nothing as the basis of your calculation it will work out that it costs £438 a year to run or nothing!!

*(500w is too high but it illustrates the principle and makes the maths easy)

My Washing machine uses 3kW when the heater is on and a cycle takes 90 mins. The electrisave will calculate that as 45p. It actually costs 6p or 9p.

The same applies if you use the electrisave on Washing machine, dryer, freezer, immersion heater, oven, fan heaters, PC's and equipment, microwave, phone chargers etc etc. For all these devices the electrisave is about as much use as the bottom half of a mermaid!!

However plug your fridge into the Aldi device and leave it for a week and it records all the electricity used as the compressor switches on and off. So you can get an exact cost of how much it costs to run. - Say £30 a year.

Ditto with Wasing Machine.

Take your house alarm which costs you £80 a year to run. That means it is using over 100w on 24/7. Are you sure that it wasn't charging its internal battery at the time you checked or monitoring some equipment? Mine uses a tiny fraction of that.

Ditto for the UPS. How can it use over 150w 24/7?

You simply can't take an instantaneous reading and extrapolate that for a whole year.

For almost every appliance the Aldi device is much more useful

SusanCarter

Is this offer only on Sunday or does it start on Sunday?

espresso

SusanCarter wrote: »

Is this offer only on Sunday or does it start on Sunday?

Should be available on Sunday until sold out. I agree that these are much more useful than the Electrisave!

Poppycat

Yes from Sunday onwards but probably wont last the full day due to stock

Lakeuk

Bought one of these today, getting some interesting readings:-

PC turned on draws 140watts, playing a 3D game puts it up to 160watts, put it in standby and it reduces to 100watts (very disappointing)

Turn the PC off and it still draws 15watts (£13 per year) :eek: (my energysaving desk lamp draws 18watts)

Always knew is would drew some power while off but not this much, but I don't suffer this as all my PC equipement is plugged into a power protector that has a on/off button to totally cut the power

Cardew

Lakeuk wrote: »

Always knew is would drew some power while off but not this much, but I don't suffer this as all my PC equipement is plugged into a power protector that has a on/off button to totally cut the power

Is that a remote power protector? - like the one someone was referring to on this forum.

If so have you checked what power that device consumes?

Lakeuk

Cardew wrote: »

Is that a remote power protector? - like the one someone was referring to on this forum.

If so have you checked what power that device consumes?

No it's not, it's a bog standard 10 point power/surge pack from argo with an easy to reach on/off switch turning off all 10 points - consumes nothing when off

Cardew

Lakeuk wrote: »

No it's not, it's a bog standard 10 point power/surge pack from argo with an easy to reach on/off switch turning off all 10 points - consumes nothing when off

Thanks.

Does the Aldi device have a battery back-up?

I have had the Maplin one for some while. This has one disadvantage in that it is powered by the 240v from the socket and has no battery back-up(like some I have seen),

So you sometimes have difficulty reading it in inaccessible sockets(I appreciate you could use an extension lead - to plug in another extension lead with lots of sockets being used).

Also when left in-situ for some days to monitor, say, a freezer, it resets if there is a power cut.