Google PowerMeter
You may remember, about 18 months ago, we got an energy monitor and not long after I posted a comment about a new scheme from Google that provided a similar service over the internet. At the time, Google PowerMeter was only available in the US, but it now looks as though it is coming to the UK.
Google PowerMeter is a free electricity usage monitoring tool that provides you with information on how much energy you are consuming in your house. Google PowerMeter receives information from utility smart meters and provides a visualisation of this information for you on iGoogle (your personalized Google homepage).
The utility company first:utility has partnered with Google and at the moment is the only energy supplier in the United Kingdom to provide free smart meters to its customers. They are currently in the process of rolling them out across the country.[More info here]
Overall it looks like a great idea and no doubt other utility companies will be offering similar packages soon. I’m not sure that it would necessarily be a good idea to switch electricity providers just to get the service – especially seeing as first:utility get mixed reviews – but knowing just how much electricity you are using has got to be a good thing. Until you know how much energy you are using, it is difficult to make savings.
For now I’ll stick with the energy monitor that we have here. That way I know how much electricity we are using, but Google doesn’t!
Don’t forget, saving energy not only saves the planet but saves you money too!
We got an energy monitor earlier this week and it has made fairly interesting reading. We’ve never been frivolous with our energy usage and do generally switch off lights when they aren’t in use (although I’m better at that than Anna), and don’t leave the TV on standby etc. but having the monitor has made us that extra bit careful.
We thought we probably use a fair bit of electricity simply because ‘living at the end of the line’ means we don’t have gas so all of our cooking and heating comes from electricity. In addition my work as a freeelance web designer means I work from home so as well as having a computer, two monitors and various hard drives etc. running all day long I’m also making cups of coffee all the time and generally using electricity during the day.
On top of all that the weather station that I run is operational 24 hours a day. As well as the weather station console, it has its own dedicated computer, monitor and router which is on 24 hours a day uploading data to the internet at minute intervals.
So, we don’t know how much electricity most people use so have little to compare our usage against but it is interesting to see which appliances are the most power hungry. Every time we switch something off the monitor shws us how much energy (and money) we are saving. It has worked as we did go around the house seeing if there was anything we could turn off. The VCR was switched off completely as we very rarely use it. We left it on before as resetting the clock on it was a pain, but we never use it to record things anymore and it saves a few watts, so off it went.
My computer and its peripherals use about 200-250 watts whereas before I would leave it on if I was popping out for a short period of time I now tend to turn it off. I haven’t experimented with how much energy sending it to sleep saves yet.
There are of course certain things we can’t turn off. The fridge has to stay on, the smoke alarms have little lights on them so must use some electricity albeit a very small amount. The weather station computer stays on as does the digibox because resetting it takes a few minutes and it is often set to record various things. We may however put it on a timer plug so that it turns off between midnight and 6am as it is rare that we record things during those hours. The cooker stays on too simply because we use the clock on it to tell the time and Anna’s alarm clock is always on as well. Other than that, I think the only other things constantly drawing power is the doorbell (which has a little light on it) and ironically the energy monitor! All in all we manage to get our energy consumption down to just over 100 Watts at its base level and when we are in and using the TV, computer etc it is usually up around 500-600 watts.
As soon as we start cooking or using the tumble drier then it obviously soars. The microwave, kettle cooker and toaster can really get things going and so far I think we’ve managed to hit around 5Kw as a maximum. All interesting in a geeky way but it does help us do our little bit for the environment and probably more of an incentive to people, especially at the moment with rising fuel prices, helps us save some money too.
If we manage to save 15% our electricity supplier will give us £15. How much electricity do you use??
