Measuring Energy Consumption at Home

I, like all of you, pay for the energy usage in my home. I get my bills once a month, and like many of you, barely take the time to look at the blurry bar graphs that show the relative month-to-month consumption. I just look at the bold faced number at the bottom of the bill, have a coronary, get annoyed, write the check and send it off. Then I go back to my daily routine and maybe, just maybe, I'll be vigilant about energy usage for the next few days...until the next bill comes.

 

A few years ago, I made a sketch of a wall-gadget that shows my house's overall energy consumption, but most importantly, it displayed how much money I'm spending (or, rather, tossing out the window). The premise was simple, a device that could play on the penny-pinching side of me and get me to conserve energy while conserving cash. It didn't take long on Google and the US Patent Searchthat I wasn't the only one thinking about this. I wasn't bummed that someone stole my zillion-dollar idea -- I was bummed because after studying their relative merits, they all fell short of what I thought they could be.

 
Fast-forward about four years, and I did the same searches, and alas, there were a few notable new products on the market (or soon to be). They range from the high-end design-chic Wattson, to several mid-market models, to a very affordable, but limited in functionality Radio Shack-esque plug and play appliance meter. It's always good to see a product category start to segment out both in price point and technology offerings, and this only means one thing: home energy monitoring devices are moving from science-kit projects to becoming mainstream gadgets. At least, that's what appears to be happening.

It should also be mentioned that in this Internet-era, many utilities are offering basic web-services allowing you to log into your account and see your bill and some even provide you with bar graphs to show you a blurry color version of what gets printed on your bill. I have also heard of a Pacific-Northwest utility giving away devices that home meters can upload/download information, but I can't find information on that pilot today for some reason.

Anyway, here's a summary of the range of products (my selections) that can be purchased today:

It isn't my intention in this blog posting to provide a comprehensive review of these products or even to assail their virtues or flaws. I can't do that because I haven't tried any of them. But I can at least describe the laundry list of features and functionality of the "Gong-O-Meter", and you can see for yourself how these products stack up.

The "Gong-O-Meter" Product Specifications:

1. Displays current, past and projected energy usage for the home
2. Displays current, past and  projected energy usage per room
3. Displays current, past and projected energy usage per appliance
4. Utilities monitored and recorded: Electricity, Gas, Water
5. Displays current usage in $Dollar format, as well as 1m, 3m, 6m, 1y, 2y historical bill summary data
   
6. Shows overlaid histogram of real-time usage as well as peak/off-peak metering data from utility
7. Shows Low/Average/High data comparisons for my neighbor, my neighborhood, my city, my state, my country
8. Offers analysis on which appliances can/should be addressed for sub-optimal energy usage
9. The device itself needs no power from the grid: it runs off solar powered-battery technology
10. The device should cost no more than $200, or better yet, have been subsidized by the utility
    
11. It should be a thoughtful design-object, not like something from a Radio Shack 101 Science Fair Kit
12. I should be able to buy one of these at Target
13. Displays the current outside temperature, ambient room temperature, time/date, and 10-day weather forecast
    
14. My mom has to be able to operate it (tall order: she barely knows how to work the thermostat)
15. It should tell me what contributions to CO2 build-up, pollution, and other unintended costs my personal energy usage has
16. It should blink and flash and make that Las Vegas jackpot chime when the surplus energy being produced from my solar panels is bought back by the utility - CHA-CHING!
    

Well, it goes without saying, the Gong-O-Meter trumps all the available devices in features and functionality by light years. But since it doesn't exist, it would be useful to examine each of today's offerings in comparison to the Gong-O-Meter's rich-if-not-impossible feature set. One thing should be noted in terms of the companies producing these products: They are all small (if not tiny) privately held companies with shoestring R&D budgets (Can't you tell? Well, maybe not the gorgeous Wattson).

And that begs the question: Where on earth are the 800-lb gorilla companies in this space? The Tyco's, the ADT's, the Philips', the Black & Deckers, the General Electrics, the Samsungs, and so on....the technology is obviously here, and it's the little guys are cobbling all the necessary pieces together and bravely and scrappily bringing products to market. Is this somehow related to the overall E.C.T.'s? (Energy Conspiracy Theories). That they, like the Oil Lobby who don't want us to stop driving cars, don't want us to really change our home energy consumption behaviors? Is ignorance still truly bliss?

I think not. And if you've read all the way down to this last sentence, I suspect you don't either. Watch this space. We need some serious design and engineering ingenuity to truly change our home energy consumption behaviors. Kudos to all the little companies braving this space so far. Godspeed (to market).

(Prediction for when all "Gong-O-Meter" specs in a single discrete product being brought to market: 2012) 

 

Design Council UK Home Energy Research Projects (2004) 

Resources:

Wattson, DIYKyoto.com

HomeJoule, ConsumerPowerline.com

PowerCost Monitor, Save Electricity Canada

Power2Save

Whole House Energy Monitor, EnergyMonitor.com 

Kill-A-Watt, P3 International 

Design Council 

[david] --- goliath

habit --- [change]

[knowledge] --- ignorance 

[scrappy] --- staid 

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