With energy prices going up all the time and there being more threats of them going up even more next year, a lot of us have come to the realisation that we need to be more concious of the energy we are consuming. TED (The Energy Detective) is a device which helps you to monitor how much electricity you are using through out the day and where you can cut costs. TED claims to cut your electricity costs between 10% and 20% which I can see as very achievable considering what we leave switched on at home.
Their basic principle is that if you can measure it, you can manage it. Of course electricity can be measured which then means that TED can present this information to you in a language you understand. A reading takes just two seconds to display electricity usage from when a change happens. Switch on a toaster and this information is then displayed on TED and tells you what your energy bill will be and how much you have spent so far this day or month.
TED is sensitive down to just 10W. This means when your fridge door opens you will see a 20W jump from the 20W bulb used in there. It also connects up to your PC so you can keep track of trends etc… For the programming geeks among us, TED also has an API which you can utilise to make custom reports.
I think I might just have to get one of these as bills are just getting scarily large at the moment. Although a bit of common sense can save you money, I think TED will actually serve as a good “real time” reminder that you actually do need to switch those lights off upstairs as they do cost you X amount of dollars a month to run.
This isn’t the only device like this – the Wattson is a similar one. I think it’s a great idea – energy bills are often very abstract and with meters hidden away you can easily lose track. I wonder whats the next step – for your car to monitor petrol costs, or on the boiler to measure your gas costs?
When I have driven cars that show current MPG I tend to ease off a fair bit to try get it to the highest MPG possible 🙂 If they could put a price gauge in there too that would be great 🙂
I second the gas monitoring also. It would be interesting to see how much gas my house uses in a day with out having to run around the back to check the meter.
While it must be installed to your home’s circuit panel (electrician recommended), once installed it provides real time monitoring or your electrical use to assist on cutting costs. A practical device for cutting energy consumption.