Our local electrical utility (Ontario Hydro) has made available (free) 40,000 of these nifty little monitor's for home use. (Pics attached below) I paid about $8 for the shipping. There is a little sending unit that attaches to the outside hydro meter and reads the disc as it spins around. There is also a version available for the newer digital meters. The house unit pictured here is about 4 inches wide by 6 inches tall and is totally wireless, so it can be placed anywhere in the house.
The idea is that it allows you to monitor your electrical use in real time and dollars, so that you can see what effect turning various devices on and off might have. According to the meter, the fan on my Summit costs about 1 cent an hour to run. The fan has variable speed, but the speed doesn't seem to have much effect. It could just be that the effect is too small for the monitor to register since it reads in 1 cent increments. I can also set it to show KWH, so maybe I'll try that later to get a more accurate reading. From top to bottom I have cost per hour (can show KWH), a visual representation of the meter turning, the total cost since turning the unit on (can be re-set every month or whenever you want), the outside temperature (a handy feature and of course, in Canadian "foreign-heat" Celsius), and finally the time, another useful feature. The unit is programmable to take into account local cost per KWH, increment increases over base KWH and seasonal rate differences for areas that use that method.
When I proudly showed my family they rolled their eyes and I could almost hear them thinking "There goes techno-geek Dad again", but when I showed them how just leaving a few lights on can double the cost of our hydro, they were impressed. Sort of backs up my constant preaching to "Turn the *&^%& lights off!" They also now know that I will be following them around with this thing in my hands hounding them even more. The desktop I am writing this on is currently costing me about 3 cents an hour to operate.....(OK, maybe I am a bit of a techno-geek.... :red:
Anyway, neat gadget, and the price was right.
The idea is that it allows you to monitor your electrical use in real time and dollars, so that you can see what effect turning various devices on and off might have. According to the meter, the fan on my Summit costs about 1 cent an hour to run. The fan has variable speed, but the speed doesn't seem to have much effect. It could just be that the effect is too small for the monitor to register since it reads in 1 cent increments. I can also set it to show KWH, so maybe I'll try that later to get a more accurate reading. From top to bottom I have cost per hour (can show KWH), a visual representation of the meter turning, the total cost since turning the unit on (can be re-set every month or whenever you want), the outside temperature (a handy feature and of course, in Canadian "foreign-heat" Celsius), and finally the time, another useful feature. The unit is programmable to take into account local cost per KWH, increment increases over base KWH and seasonal rate differences for areas that use that method.
When I proudly showed my family they rolled their eyes and I could almost hear them thinking "There goes techno-geek Dad again", but when I showed them how just leaving a few lights on can double the cost of our hydro, they were impressed. Sort of backs up my constant preaching to "Turn the *&^%& lights off!" They also now know that I will be following them around with this thing in my hands hounding them even more. The desktop I am writing this on is currently costing me about 3 cents an hour to operate.....(OK, maybe I am a bit of a techno-geek.... :red:
Anyway, neat gadget, and the price was right.
