Can anyone claim to have reduced their electricity consumption as a result of having a smart meter?
I am tempted to build my own 'Open Energy Monitor' smart meter, I just know that it will cost me money to purchase and run. Whether it will lead to any saving is questionable. At the end of the day all I can do is switch things off, which I largely do anyway.
It is a pity that the current transformers that Open Energy Monitor supply are quite large. What I would like is a current transformer small enough to be used on the different circuits in a Wylex fuse box.
I'm sure someone has, but in general, they don't lead to savings. The observed behaviour is that people play with them for a month or so, and then get bored. Furthermore, people find that running the washing machine, boiling the kettle, etc all cost much less than they would have guessed before they measured it.
I suspect that if I got one, I'd do almost exactly that - get into it for a few weeks, then forget it even exists.
Not going to buy a new television to save a few watt-hours. Already use mostly high efficiency LED for lighting.
Maybe we'd find a surprise here or there - but having found them, we'd either modify our usage, replace the device, or put up with it. We would not expect to find further surprises every few months, certainly not more frequently. I can imagine that if, for example, a freezer started using much more electricity, it just might be useful.
Much of your electricity consumption is likely to be stuff that is small consumption but used for long hours. These energy monitors can verify this sort of thing.
My own big consumer is the TV (300w) and fridges/freezers. The (mains) doorbell uses a surprising amount. Also TV mast head amplifier and any pre-amplifiers you might have.
Not a smart meter (though I do have one), but a portable plug device some years back that showed me that, yeah, running big old formerly enterprise 10+years old UNIX kit 24x7 (HP-PA, SPARC, Dynix/ptx) in the garage uses a lot of electricity. So now I don't do that, and run mini ITX and SBC computers for these tasks. They're faster and use a tiny amount of electricity.
I doubt there is much more of a saving to be had anywhere in my house on electricity usage now. All appliances are decently rated, TV is now LED back lit instead of CRT (that saved quite a bit, that change did). Anything else I shaved off at this point would be saving pennies at the expense of lots of convenience, so I'm happy where I am now.
Back as long ago as 1986 I butchered a prepayment electricity meter, putting a reflective optical sensor looking at the black line on the spinning disk. This was arranged via a buffer to give me an opto-isolated interrupt signal to a small single board computer development system I had running 24/7 to monitor power usage. Same SBC was controlling 8 zones on the central heating (large 7 bed Edwardian house). The modified meter was installed after the isolator switch and before the consumer unit (units - there were 5 !). As PC's became more available the same modified meter ran a somewhat more GUI / user friendly system doing the same functions. Was still running when I sold the house in 2007.
We don't have a smart meter, but, as a result of a long conversation here a couple of years ago, have been using the free device supplied by the electricity supplier (E.on at the time), and a simple check around the house secured substantial savings. Mainly leaving lights and PCs running 24/7. I also changed the most frequently used bulbs to LED.
Again, as others have said, after the initial check, there is not much to be done unless old bad habits creep back.
Me too but sometimes I leave something on and forget it. Or due to timing errors my emersion heater switches on 15mins before E7 kic ks in, as my mechanical timer tends to run a bit fast so two weeks ago I no ticed that I was consumring 3.9KW at about midnight (00:17 actually), I hav e the meter on a shelf like some might have an classis cliff ornament or so mething,So I went and switched my emmersion heater off. My E7 switches on a bout 00:30 and my timer was set to come on about 00:45.
So yes I saved a bit by noticing that the water heater was on when it shoul d have been off. Now I might not have noticed this if I hadn't noticed that I was consumering 3.9KW rather than the expected 300-500w for a weeknight around 7pm to 00:29, so this could have gone on for days, weeks perhaps mon ths.
Another use I put it to is to know when my electric over is up to temperatu re. As teh meter goes from about 3KW down to my normal setting when the oven ha s reached it's correct temeprature, while still watching TV or doing anythi ng else. And I don't have a smart meter.
I also used to to prove to a careworker that while they have been told not to charge their mobile phone while at their clients home it is NOT because it cost a fortune to charge a mobile phone and we don't want to increase ou r clinets electricity bill. Yes also 3 weeks ago a carer rang my doorbell saturday morning because she couldn;t phone base to get the keycode for next door he phone was flat and she also thought that charging phones was expensive, she even offered me 50 p for 5mins charge. I should have said sorry we've left the EU now that'll be a quid ;-)
That doesn't reduce consumption, just big6 profits :-P
That is useful, I pop down to preheat the oven, then go back to to the study while it warms up, and can see when the IHD goes from red to amber/green, it's time to go back down and put stuff in the oven
similar to someone else mentioned about "smart" washing machines the other day, rather than having a fancy LCD display on the front, it would be more useful if these devices were networked and could simply "ping" you a reminder that the washing is now ready to go on the line...
The only benefit of having a smart meter (i.e. one that submits readings to my supplier) is getting accurate readings for bills and not estimates and not having to correct their estimates (if they're significantly different).
The benefit of having an energy monitor (from my supplier Eon that connects wirelessly to the smart meter) is that it has the traffic light display which sits beside my desk upstairs and it tends to flick between green & orange. If it goes to red, I tend to notice and check if I've left anything on that I could turn off (e.g. left lights on downstairs), but it's usually a temporary flick to red due to e.g. the freezer kicking in then off.
It would be nice to be able to tune the power levels for red/green/amber
red is usually clear enough, it means something 'big' (oven, toaster, iron, laser printer) is switched on, mine never goes red from 'background' consumption
amber usually means TV or desktop PC or a whole bunch of lights are on
it won't go green with more than a small laptop and a couple of lights on unless the fridge/freezer compressor is stopped, it would be nice to set the green->amber threshold just a bit higher for a quick check that all is green before going to bed.
It's me. I note the reading at the same time whenever I remember and write it on a sheet of A4 kept by the meter. I know exactly how much power things use, the label and instruction data says so.
My retired car-mechanic neighbour still does jobs most days (for cash). His wife works 4 days a week at a local nursing home, both get the state pension and private pensions.
Their washing machine runs every day, even if it is just for her poly cotton smock uniform, but also his greasy overalls.
They have a tumble dryer in their conservatory used even if is a nice day.
Their son comes round and has a bath there every day, filling up the silly 'shower bath' (to save money !).
They wonder why they are still paying £260 twice a year for water even though a meter has been fitted, and have a matching high gas and electric bill (also a smart meter).
I keep saying, that 'shower bath' needs 2 or 3 times as much water as a proper bath, but they cannot see it.
It does slightly ;-P because I wouldn;t be using the hot water until about 1am, so if it's been switched on 1/2 hour earlier it'll be a little cooler by 1am.
I guess that means you''re not married either ;-)
It's can't be far away, I was tempted by a wieghign machine that reported your weight via an app to the phone. I'll be more tempted as the price for IoT reduces.
I do now wonder why the normal 'modern' (LED Screen) meters don't display what the level of power consumption is when you look at the display. It would not cost much to make the meters so that they could connected to a home Wifi network. The present government smart meter program use mobile phone networks. As a result the cost of running these meters is quite high. A cost which is borne by the electricity suppliers and no doubt recovered from their customers.
I have an Eco-Eye Smart PV. (1) Besides its own digital display, it can also be connected to a PC, and will display a real time graph. (I think the sample interval is about 5 seconds).
(1) A standard version without PV facility is available.
Yes. I got an Owl (previous generation) and a single plug/socket that measures power for an appliance. I reckon it shaved about 10% off the
24/7 house base load by finding the various ancient wall warts plugged in hidden behind furniture generating heat to no good end.
You will probably find some extra hidden base load saving - whether or not it is enough to save the purchase price in 5 years depends. In my case it was since the TV at the time was wasting 30W continuously.
Newer ones are much more frugal though you do have to watch out for somewhat insane default settings.
Suspicious items are older TVs during the rollout of TDTV which tend to have power hungry default "run the tuner all the time even in standby" settings which coupled with a PSU that doesn't like doing that and can be a surprisingly big contribution to base load.
Most well behaved kit on standby is well under 4W and today
My old one used to beep every minute or two when it had finished, which was annoying if it finished overnight. Most annoying trait of current W/D is if you do a synthetic wash, without drying, it pauses at the end of the final rinse before the spin, so you toddle downstairs thinking "must be ready to stick on the line" and it's just sitting there with the drum full of water.
+1 Was also surprised how little the 14k BTU portable AC was using during the recent hot spell.
AFAICS though, the only real advantage is having the gas usage on the monitor, as that's a little more involved* without a smart meter.
Lee
*Yes I know there are projects around to read the non-smart gas meters and post the data to a PC, but most "ordinary" people likely aren't aware of those.
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