Monitoring power consumption in the home

Published on December 23, 2007 By Draginol In Pure Technology

If I had more free time (and I hope to acquire this free time in the future as my schedule lightens up in early 2010) I would like to make something that does this:

A device that you would connect to your main power box in your house and then sends a wireless signal to your PC telling you how much power your home is using in real-time.

This data could then be shared, in real-time with on the net to a friendly website that would display with graphs your monthly power usage and compare it to other people with similarly sized homes.

The closest thing I've found so far is this. The price is about right but it doesn't quite do the things I'd like to do with it.

But I think there's be a market for a $99 product that lets people monitor their home power consumption and see how they can reduce it.

Comments

terpfan1980

on Dec 23, 2007

I've seen a few devices that do similarly to what you propose, but are more like the alternative you point to.

Personally, I'm not sure I'd really want to know about the power consumption. If I did know, I'd just freak about what else I could shut down to save money with. The better alternative for me would be to switch to solar power generation using roof top panels. If I could put up enough panels to generate the power I need and have a small surplus, or at least only have to buy a little power from the power company, I'd be most happy and wouldn't care at all about my own personal power consumption. After all, if the power isn't costing me anything beyond the investment in the panels (and whatever I have to pay to finance same...) why would I really care that I use a few extra watts here or there provided it wasn't generating too much extra heat to have to worry about removing from the home in the summer months??

Neat idea though, and definitely thinking along the right lines for saving energy and money at home.

Daniel Barnhoorn

on Dec 24, 2007

Hi Brad,

You've probably already seen it, but there's another product on that same site which has the pc link, and the price to go with it too

Link

danny

jperry13

on Jan 19, 2008

I have been looking at home power generation for about a year now, and I have to say that there is a rather large group of people who are getting into it (At least in the States), though not nearly enough to make a difference. With State and Federal tax shelters a person could slide into a solar power array for under $25k, and by all the reading I have done, a person would see a 8-15 year payback on the equipment. And that is based on selling your surplus power generation back to the grid.

If you live in a rural setting with a moving body of water and a decent change in hydralic head (Elevation) you could look into a miniture hydro-electric plant for a lot less money then either photo-electric arrays or wind turbines. But the amount of generated electricity is quite a bit less and there are elcological concerns depending on your location.

My point in all of this is that more and more people are getting interested into the residential energy production gig because of the rising prices of energy, and the drive to increase environmental awareness. I look forward to seeing what will happen in the near future.

~jp

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