You make what you measure. Watch any number carefully enough and you'll tend to optimize it, and most households have significant room to.
It seems like this would be of more interest for commercial applications.
Well that's what my friend's startup focuses on currently piloted in South Africa. The startup built a device that reliably saves power. You don't need to pay any fee up front for the device, you "pay as you go" on amount of saving made on monthly basis. No catch. Average savings currently are around 10-15%, engineering team is pushing the numbers up as we speak. Business has gotten necessary funding and even the primary energy supplier has come on board to put an initiative together that would implement the solution to all street lights in the country in the near future. South Africa is currently going through energy crisis due to huge demand and lack of supply.
PS. My wife is one of the co-founders. :)
Businesses spend more money on power and need more detail to really drill into their power usage. That is why Gridspy (my startup) is focusing on them first.
Because of this, I think that Watt vision and Gridspy are in slightly different markets, perhaps even complimentary.
There's also a big difference between knowing in the abstract that (say) water kettles are expensive, and knowing specifically what is costing us money in our house.
I believe the OP was asking is what is the benefit of this additional measuring and monitoring. What will it provide beyond the KW/h information I can get from my own meter?
http://www.p3international.com/products/special/P4400/P4400-...
that would be really compelling if it were possible to make the sensors small enough and inexpensive enough.
- turn stuff off when it is not in use
- get rid of your old fridge/freezer
- get rid of any crts that you still have
- take a good look at wall warts and decide which ones really need to be plugged in when they're not charging something
- use a laptop, not a desktop, and enable powersaving
- use CFLS instead of bulbs
- run your heater at 18 degrees celsius (whatever that is in Fahrenheit)
- do not use electric heat for anything other than your quick-boil kettle, so no electric range etc.
There, that will save you $200 and at least that much in electricity.
The above list is a compilation of the outcome of a years worth of experimenting in a house that was powered by solar cells, the great insight of all that is that it is 10x as cheap to save a Watt hour than to generate one.
And also, for the record, I am aware that FPL is testing a product that syncs in with home networks in some cities across Florida. They're charging something like $2-3 / month for the service, which in my mind is a much better deal, especially since their analytics are probably far better.
I'm looking for a link now.
Great list by the way. Our offgrid house uses the same amount of power per day as two towel rails by applying this sort of approach. The main power hogs are pumping fresh water and sewerage.
Seriously though, how many KWh do you go through in a day ?
We managed to get by on 1600 W of solar panels in Northern Canada, which in some weeks was touch and go on battery depletion (you really don't want to get below 70% or so).
That's what kept us going in the dark of winter:
http://pics.ww.com/v/jacques/renewables/batteries/IM000398.J...
I have yet to figure out how to intercept the Black and Decker's signal to duplicate wattvision's functionality. This is easy(ish) to do with a mini Arduino and a pair of XBee radios.
i bet the digital meters are easier to read.
hmmmm.....
- Requires a smart meter or another online meter such as a TED5000
- Extremely simple (at present)
I'm using the ted5k. I don't know what you mean by simple, it's really detailed, and you can even load pricing models into the device and get an idea of what everything costs and when.
edit: Also, it uses induction coils around the mains feeds. It's easy enough to install that I did it myself.
(and disclaimer: I work for google)
I checked Wattvision right after that and there were no updates, so today I'm super happy to see that the hardware is available. If it proves to work well, hopefully we'll see a story on CNN (i.e. to the public at large) in the next few months.
Of course, the set of people that buy this device are more "green" than the average consumer and also more likely to change habits. Nonetheless, looking at correlations of household-level usage with location specific variables like weather, sporting events,etc. could be really interesting. Moreover, conducting experiments where alerts are different for 50% of the users to test how responses differ would really illustrate how public policy should move forward. Think of the A/B testing web developers use, but with possibly wide-ranging consequences.
Great work!
It's easy to merely understand power usage (I always have done), but to see it revealed and presented like this is particularly fascinating. It's makes you stop and think. This is a good thing, for both environmental and educational reasons.
I can't wait to get my hands on Wattvision, and good luck to them!
Nobody really gives a damn about being green, green chic on the other hand... I can't wait to try it out.
You sign up, regularly put in your current meter readout and get an estimate of your monthly and yearly electricity bill. No hardware required. I've gotten a number of signups since and some people really get religious about putting in their data - some do it every other day!
Getting your energy consumption down can be an interesting sport, see the Tweet-A-Watt.
Black & Decker EM100B Energy Saver Series Power Monitor: http://www.amazon.com/Black-Decker-EM100B-Energy-Monitor/dp/...
Blue Line PowerCost Monitor: http://www.amazon.com/PowerCost-Monitor-BLI-2800/dp/B0028LS5...
I believe I saw the B&D model on an episode of "Ask This Old House". Not sure if any competitors offer a web or iPhone interface, or just the receiver devices, but in any case this is a useful form of feedback that will likely become a standard feature as the monitoring equipment gets cheaper.
This looks like it could have the same benefit.
But the name...
