looking for simple plugin electricity usage meter recommendation.

[Tim Lamb]

I have posted this before.. use a deep enough bowl, add milk/water to Oats. Microwave for 60 seconds at rated 900Watts, stir, cook for a further 60 seconds. Stir. Job done. one serving.

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[Pancho]

Yes, and no putting on super strong glasses to try to hold wires against the pins of a microprocessor in order to flash it with Tasmota.

I do use MQTT and Domoticz to view the results (nice but not needed), both running on the ubiquitous Raspberry Pi.

I have 6 of these plugs from Ali Express, but the previous shape. 5 worked perfectly, one will not report instantaneous power/current but works otherwise. Later on I bricked one of them flashing with a firmware update (so don't update).

[Spike]

It’s clamped round one of the cables to the (dumb) meter.

I don’t have to guess the base load, as I can read the total consumption from midnight to when I get up, it’s a case of dividing one by the other. It’s pretty even at 140W for 8 hours.

To get a reading of an appliance, such as the washing machine doing its thing, take a reading before and after, subtract appropriate amount of base load. If the fridge/freezer cuts in, do an estimate and take that amount off.

Do this a handful of times and you have a pretty good idea of what the usage is. Repeat for any other appliances of interest.

[Fredxx]

The trouble with this type of measurement is it's unlikely to take power factor into account. For something like heater then it's not going to be an issue, but for some electronic devices there's going to be a modest error.

I suppose you can compare readings with your electricity meter for problematic devices.

[Andrew]

+1

That's how I do it. Chuck in a handful of frozen loganberries at the start, that I have collected during the summer, add demerara sugar and a dash of Elmlea and that's it.

'Microwave' porridge sachets are for people who are lacking in grey matter.

[farter]

Fraid so for a quick test of how much the stove takes to make some porridge when you can't just plug the stove into an energy meter easily.

Corse it is for the one quick test of a single meal of porridge only done once.

That's a separate issue but clearly that is what the OP wants to do.

[Chris Green]

How would you do it then? I really don't see how I could do it in our house. Would you go to the consumer unit and disconnect things there just leaving the circuit with the porridge cooker on? ... and then you have to go round disconnecting everything else on the porridge cooker circuit.

[farter]

Turn off all the breakers in the CU except the one that supplies the stove and oven if you have a separate hob and oven.

Yes, when testing how much electricity the STOVE uses to cook the porridge.

Yes, but that isn't hard to do.

[Theo]

So we can answer the OP's question:

0.9 kW for 2/60 of an hour 0.9*2/60 = 0.03kWh

priced at 35p/kWh, cost = 0.03*35 = 1.05p per serving.

Power meter £10 Energy to cover purchase price of meter = 10/0.0105 = 952 bowls.

Theo

[Robin]

microwaves do not deliver 100% of power consumed to the cavity. At 70% it's 1.5p per serving.

[AnthonyL]

I can't but help think the 5 mins is a massive amount of time in the microwave. I put the Scotts Porridge Oats (I'm not Scottish) directly into my breakfast bowl with just enough water to cover and do it from

1 min (on 800w max) for a small portion to 1min20sec for a larger portion.

My sister, who did the same as you, couldn't believe how much sweeter the porridge tasted doing a shorter time when she overnighted here.

[N_Cook]

But remember to offset the cost of heating the house, for the overall household budget.

[Andy Burns]

Don't leave the house for several hours after consuming the porridge though.

[charles]

That's well over 2 years!

[The Natural Philosopher]

Don't be ridiculous. It isn't a question of how much power they deliver, its a question of whether two 1 minute full power blasts do the job

As we know full power is 900W or less.

[Robin]

What's ridiculous about:

a. the "rated" power of a microwave oven is the power (D) it delivers in the oven

b. the cost of using a microwave depends on the total power (T) it uses to deliver D

c. T is invariably and substantially greater than D

And whether 2 x 1 mins does the job depends very much on D - and on the oats/oatmeal used, how you like your porridge, and the temperature of the water/milk.

[Martin Brown]

If that was the only thing that you used it for. But if you manage to identify the handful of devices that really are consuming power 24/7 for no good reason with it then payback is pretty good if you can decrease your base load by say 3W you will save £10 in the first year.

Most homes there is at least 10W of vampire load somewhere doing nothing particularly useful and lurking behind furniture. Old wall warts of the iron cored transformer sort that are warm to the touch for instance.

In fact as a rule of thumb anything warm to the touch needs looking at.

[The Natural Philosopher]

The poster STATED THAT 2 MINUTES DID THE JOB asshole

[Chris Green]

Which, compared with the (now) typical annual cost of £2500 or so, is a bit pointless is it not?

[Tim+]

Which only highlights that monitoring your power consumption to make porridge on a domestic scale is pretty pointless. It could still be £10 well spent if used more appropriately.

Tim