Electricity Monitors

PiKe · 21 Sep 2010 at 09:55

Does anyone know of an accurate electricity monitor (our Minim one is over 25% inaccurate) that you can connect to a Pc and use with Enio or similar?

PiKe · 21 Sep 2010 at 10:01

Delvis said:
..?

Who are you with?

I know some companies give out specific 'wireless' ones you plug onto your meter

British Gas.

PiKe · 21 Sep 2010 at 10:05

Delvis said:
Think they do an energy monitor...but stupid thing is...you need to plug it into the mains to use it!

And you can't connect it to a PC and it doesn't do historical data so it's not a great deal of use.

PiKe · 21 Sep 2010 at 10:07

Delvis said:
But it tells you how much energy you use...so it does what it says

Indeed, but I was after a bit more than that

PiKe · 21 Sep 2010 at 10:10

jonno.co.uk said:
got an eon one, usnure how accurate it is but says we've used 450 kwh over the last 31 days, no wonder our bills are so high.

Well the British Gas supplied Minim one says we used 581Kwh in the past 30 days, so 1743Kwh over the last 90 days, but the actual bill says that we used 1284KWh in the last 90 days.

Massively inaccurate.

PiKe · 21 Sep 2010 at 11:17

Zirax said:
I've just found the new EDF one:-
http://www.edfenergy.com/ecomanager-controller/

The main point is turning everything off from one button. Rather than running around turning everything off at the wall, pressing one button does appeal (also helps ensure you have got everything).

Does anyone know of any other monitors that can do this?

It's not 'everything', it's only everything connected to the supplied 3 transmitter plugs.

PiKe · 21 Sep 2010 at 12:12

Selekt0r said:
Fair point, however what you will probably find is that the power consumed by the things on standby overnight will make relatively little difference to your overall electricity bill.

The surprising things for me were just how much the halogen lighting in our kitchen, bathroom and some bedrooms costs to run So, whilst I'm not going to rip it all out and replace (yet), at least we make sure lights are switched off when there is nobody in the room.

Sky HD boxes are notorious for eating power in standby, I believe they use about 55-60watts !

PiKe · 21 Sep 2010 at 12:28

Selekt0r said:
Shouldn't be anywhere near that. Sky quote 36W for an HD box when active, and 19 in Standby.

Either way, I accept that if you have a lot of boxes on standby then it could add up, but probably not to more than 150W total. This would equate to a saving of around £5 p/month saving if you switched them off for 12h/day, so the big energy savings are to be found elsewhere.

Maybe the new ones, but the first generation one are crap.