Energy Saving and Monitoring

Energy monitors are designed to show you, in an easy to understand way, how much energy you are currently using. They don't save you energy directly, but they do show you the impact of turning on and off different appliances and lights.

Most energy monitors consist of three basic parts, the sensor, the transmitter and the receiver. The sensor clips around the live cable either as it comes into your house at your electricity meter or as the cable from the meter goes into your consumer unit or fuse board. The sensor then plugs into the transmitter and it sends the information in real time about the amount of power you are using to the receiver. The receiver displays this information in a variety of ways depending on the model. For example, the DIY Kyoto Wattson glows different colours whilst the Eco-Eye Elite just displays it in large, clear numerals.

Some of the energy monitors also have options to download the information to a PC for further analysis. This can be useful in finding appliances that consume a lot of energy when you are not there or are asleep.

What you do with the information from the energy monitors determines how much saving you make. Your home will generally have a base level of power needs that you will find it impossible to get below, even when you think you have turned everything off. Examples of contributors to this include alarms and central heating boilers and timers. If you are struggling to find these items, the only sure fire way of getting the consumption down to zero is to turn off each circuit at the consumer unit, then turn them on one at a time until you work out which circuit is drawing the power.

The next level of power required is the energy required to run your home in a convenient and modern way during the day. This will include items such as your broadband router, cable modem, Sky+ box, DECT cordless phones etc. You could turn all these off when you are not using them but we are living in the 21st century and they have become a way of life.

The final level is the night time level, when you are at home with the lights on, watching TV, cooking , eating etc. This will generally be the highest point of your consumption.
In order to effectively monitor your home and save energy and therefore money, you need to make a note of the current power requirements for the three levels mentioned above. This will give a baseline on which to work.

Having established a baseline, you can start making adjustments to your habits such as unplugging your mobile phone and other chargers and switching to energy saving lighting. You can also consider installing a home automation system to turn everything off that you do not need overnight when you go to bed.

Alternative sources of energy, such as Solar PV can be useful in providing the power needed during the day, whilst not spending too much on having it installed. At the moment it is not really worth generating more than you need as the resale rates are very poor so you would be just giving it away to the grid!