Electricity Monitors - Is there really a need for them?

Fat women pay good money to Weight Watchers to be told not to shovel food into thier mouths.

Do we really need electricity monitors to tell us to use less electric?

Reply to
ARWadsworth
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I have a free-from-Southern-Electric CurrentCost Classic. It's a piece of crap[1], but it does have an RS232 socket. I've just bought an 8 quid cable (cheaper than buying the bits to make one) and have hooked it up to one of my servers. It is currently dumping power readings and timestamps into a Postgresql database every 6-7 seconds or so (it reports whenever the remote current clamp sends an RF report).

Cursory playing with some SQL have indicated it could make quite a good way of keeping an eye on my upcoming bill - so I'm going to polish the database a bit (aggregate the data to more useful periods) and front it with a web page for my iPhone that will give me:

Current power; Daily consumption and cost per day; (Allowing for split rate fixed times tarrifs) Total to pay so far since my last bill; A pretty graph, maybe. I want to do an SVG graph as an excuse to learn some SVG :)

And I will calibrate it against the meter itself because I'm pretty sure it's not actually that accurate. If we assume the voltage remains reasonably constant (yes I know..) and assume a constant power factor for my loads (all the large ones are resistive) then at least I can get a scaling factor to make sure it's mostly about right...

[1] Nice idea but the display is rubbish. Horrible interface and useless reporting, apart from the kW instant readout which is the only bit worth having.

Cheers

Tim

Reply to
Tim Watts

No there's no actual _need_ for them and once you've got a days worth of information about what your average usage is, their utility drops rapidly. I did find it slightly surprising (though a seconds thought would have told me) to discover that the fluorescents in the garage sucked up 600 Watts. But since there are 10 of them at 60W a pop it's not unreasonable. It might be useful to keep an eye on usage, to see if it's creeping up or if any home improvements make it drop. But it's not exactly something you'd watch hawkishly. In all, it's probably somewhere below a room thermometer in the order of useful home gadgets.

Reply to
pete

No we don't. However, your analogy is a bit suspect as fat people need to be educated to the calorific and fat content of lots of different foods, whereas electrickery comes in a 'one size fits all, one flavour' sort of thing :-)

Reply to
Pete Zahut

Can't you read the voltage from a UPS?

Reply to
Andy Burns

no, but it might help us to understand how..

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

So like a 600 calorie cream cake then?

or ten 60 calorie buns?

Reply to
ARWadsworth

I wouldn't know - I've never eaten a fluorescent tube, with cream or without.

Reply to
pete

I have already sorted out the fat bastard problem ie "eat less cream cakes". If I had spent 3 years at Uni doing "Food Science" I would probably say "eat less calories"

Reply to
ARWadsworth

Switch things off.

Colin Bignell

Reply to
Nightjar

Wot dat den?

Seriously - we're not that fancy here.

I'll get a UPS when work chucks some out and I can get a decent one for the cost of some new batteries.

But it's a valid idea, if one happened to have one...

Reply to
Tim Watts

I get a bill from the electricty company every few months that tells me that.

Colin Bignell

Reply to
Nightjar

If you'd paid attention at school instead of swapping mucky mags underneath the desk you'd say "eat fewer calories" ;-)

Owain

Reply to
Owain

I sold the mags not swapped them.

Reply to
ARWadsworth

But which things?

Example. I have just replaced an ageing large rack mount server with and a jet direct print server box with a low power headless PC that has a parallel port. I estimate this will save 60-100w, and pay for itself in two years..If I had had a monitor, I could have been a bit more sure.

example: I have an ageing chest freezer. What is it using? No idea. Would a new one pay for itself in say 5 years? I dont know.

If I had an energy monitor, I might....

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Nightjar

Reply to
ARWadsworth

And if you'd done English you'd say "eat fewer calories" ! .-)

Reply to
Bob Eager

Nightjar

Reply to
ARWadsworth

I've a CurrentCost CC128 also connected to a server logging its data output. The consumption graph can be quite revealing, it's small/medium loads that are on for long periods that clock up the units rather the larger loads (we don't have a tumble drier...). So that PC drawing "only" 100W for 15 hours uses more than the 3kW kettle and electric cooking combined. I now turn my PC off if I'm not going to use it for a hour or two...

The clamp is very sensitive to position, if it moves the readings will vary quite a lot. As for accuracy, mine is pretty good. The bill says we use about 20 units/day, that is what the CurrentCost tells me as well.

Useful? If you have the abilty to see a graph:

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can highlight things like the coffee machine, the PC mentioned above or some ones garage lights, were it may not be obvious how much they are actually using.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

Christ on a bicycle, wot you got in the garage? Sodding main battle tank?

Reply to
Tim Streater

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