Green or Nothing

Want to save money and cut your home’s carbon footprint? Love gadgets as well? Well then you need an electricity monitor. We’ve found and tested 3 different ones to fit all budgets from under £15 all the way up to around £100.

It’s a simple premise – the less electricity you consume the smaller your monthly bill will be and the smaller the amount of CO2 you and your family are responsible for releasing into the environment. Yes, this is you taking responsibility for and reducing your carbon footprint. These particular devices can reportedly cut your electricity usage by up to 25% and make a significant difference to your efforts to save the environment.

Think about just how many electrical items we have plugged in around the house, chugging away in the background to make our lives easier, simpler, and more entertaining, it really is quite incredible.

Flat screen TVs, DVD players, PVRs, computers, laptops, printers, wifi routers, cookers, microwave ovens, dishwashers, washing machines, tumbler driers, toasters, kettles, emersion heaters, power showers – the list goes on and on, and we haven’t even mentioned the lights yet!

But it’s only when you invest in an electricity monitor or home power meter that you get an idea of just how greedily you and your family consumes this seemingly magical, invisible and endless resource that has become so entwined with how we live our modern lives.

Plug-In Power and Energy Monitor Meters

The cheapest and simplest type of device that you can get to measure just how much electricity you’re using are Plug-In Power and Energy Monitor Meters. They look a bit like chunky adaptors with an LCD display bolted on top and can be used to tell you how much electricity individual electrical appliances use. The meter will display; Voltage (V), Current (A), Power (W), operating time (hours/minutes/seconds), and finally the cost in £s.

Being relatively inexpensive and easy to setup these types of power meters can you get you quickly on your way to measuring how much electricity you use. But they do have three major drawbacks; you can only measure one appliance at a time, you have to be able to reach the appliance’s socket easily (a pain if you’re trying to measure the power consumption of your TV or computer and you need to crawl under your desk with a torch to view the reading, which I had to do), and lastly it doesn’t measure other devices that run directly off the mains such as the cooker and lights.

Pros

• Cheap, it won’t break the bank.
• Easy to setup and get using straight away.

Cons

• Difficult to use in some circumstance.
• Doesn’t allow you to measure the electricity usage of your whole house.

Buy from Amazon.co.uk from £15.99

Buy from EthicalSuperstore.com from £14.95

The OWL Wireless Energy Monitor

A wonderfully clever device that allows to you remotely monitor how much electricity your home is using at any given time. Simply clip on the energy sensor onto your existing electricity meter’s cabling (don’t worry you can do this yourself, no DIY skill or electrician required) and then watch the levels on the portable and wireless monitor change as you walk around your house turning things on and off. We were amazed at how much things like turning on the kettle, toaster and hobs of our electric cooker used, incredible! Also very revealing was turning on all the lights in the house to see just how much electricity it’s possible to waste by being lazy and neglectful.

Apart for the expected kWh measurement the OWL also includes readings for current CO2 levels being emitted, temperature and humidity (just to let you know when you should be considering turning on the heating), and also a very handy price display that tells you just how much you’re saving by being so diligent with all your turning off of appliances etc.

The latest version of the OWL now comes with a memory function to allow you to record, monitor and analyse your home’s usage patterns. You can also purchase a separate device that allows you to download and analyse this data and export it into programs such as Excel (due out end of September we believe).

Pros

• See how much energy your home is using in real time.
• Helps you save lots of money.
• A great educational tool for you and your family.

Cons

• Hard to pick holes in this great product.

Buy from Amazon.co.uk for £32.10

Buy from EthicalSuperstore.com for £34.95 or (£29.95 for the old version)

Wattson Home Energy Meter

This is the ultimate way in which to measure your household’s electrical consumption. At a touch under £100 it’s certainly not cheap, but with it’s very funky design allowing it to blend into any funky modern home (think lava lamp tones for the 21^st century), and with its intelligent array of features it’s sure to keep every gadget addict happy.

I haven’t had personal experience of using the Wattson but I did manage to have a chat with my brother about it (the most gadget addicted member of our family). He’s been using it for a little over 2 years now told me that it really did make him and his family very aware of how much electricity things like leaving lights on can use (they soon learnt to turn them off). After gauging how much their ambient usage was they also got into the habit of using the Wattson to see if any appliances etc. were left on when they shouldn’t have been before they left the house or went to bed.

The download of the data function was also pretty handy for picking up usage spikes and allowed him to spot when certain time dependent electricity hungry devices such as water heaters were incorrectly set. Having said that though there’s no export function with the data so you can’t send it into Excel allowing you to do your own usage analysis (something the Green or Gadget Guy Big Brother was really keen to do). With regards to the display he felt that while being bigger than the OWL, and perhaps a little bit prettier it doesn’t really justify the price.

Pros

• Looks great.
• Download and analyse your electricity usage patterns and habits.

Cons

• On the pricey side.

Buy from Amazon.co.uk from £90.89

Buy from EthicalSuperstore.com from £99.95

One of the great things about investing in a power meter for your home to enable you to monitor how much electricity you consume is that is soon makes you aware of just how much you waste in all aspects of your life, food, water, everything!

I truly believe that this is a wonderful way to kick start an eco-friendly lifestyle for you and your family.

Have you had any experience with power savings devices such as the ones featured in this article? Add your comments below.