We got one the other day and now watch it like hawks paranoid about how much it costs.

Will anyone else be eating sandwiches for tea tonight by the light of a head torch?

Not as sad as me. I wired mine up to an old pc which logged the data and plotted graphs that I could see over the internet. I was able to see when wife got in and made a cup of coffee.
(I don’t do this anymore, the PC was too expensive to run all the time!)

Eon sent me one through a while ago, but I have yet to set it up. I should really though as it would help to show the other members of my family why leaving lights on, etc. is just a waste of money.

OP – Who did you get it from?

Free from NPower because we switched to paperless billing.

It is the same model as shown in the picture and looks quite cool in a way that only blokes on STW would appreciate.

Stuff I have noted so far.

House in “silent running mode” £0.06/hr

Laptop £0.01/hr

Kettle £0.40/hr

Toaster £0.20/hr

Downstairs lights £0.07/hr

The charger for my Airbike P7 would appear to cost nothing so I’m thinking of running the whole house on bike lights. Heavy initial cost but free afterwards.

. I wired mine up to an old pc which logged the data and plotted graphs that I could see over the internet

yay 🙂 I presume that was a special one with data outputs

Will anyone else be eating sandwiches for tea tonight by the light of a head torch

And if you use rechargable batteries in the torch which you recharge at work then the cost reduces even more 😀

One of these

Looks like you can a bit of kit to send data to a web site,here

We got one the other day and now watch it like hawks paranoid about how much it costs.

It’ll wear off, we got the EON one, good bit of kit, can download the data to a PC if required, haven’t got round to doing that yet.

Ironically it hasn’t convinced me to make much of an effort to reduce usage yet. Thing is for all the lights left on (we have low energy bulbs, external lights are on a PIR so go off after a couple of minutes etc.) it’s still things like the washing machine, tumble dryer, dishwasher and kettle that make it go mental. Actually we do use the tumble dryer a lot less during the summer, we got a good rotary clothes line so do air dry whenever possible (not so often in the sunny North West).

One thing I realised was that was all those chargers left plugged in not charging makes no difference. I was most miffed as I’d gone out and bought a multi socket with individual on off switches. The energy required to make that is never going to be offset by the miniscule savings achieved by switching the chargers off.

Got the same free one as the OP.

It’s really helped motivate the wife. Whenever I used to go around switching off lights she’d complain she’d married her father. Now she does it and tells me off for leaving them on.

One thing I realised was that was all those chargers left plugged in not charging makes no difference. I was most miffed as I’d gone out and bought a multi socket with individual on off switches.

I’ve never understood why chargers can’t be designed so that they only draw power when they are plugged into something. Surely that can’t be hard to do?

My eON one is by the backdoor, so we can see on the way out the house if we’ve forgotten to turn something off.

Got the same free one as the OP.

Have you changed the Tariff on it or are you using the preset one? The instruction say look at your bill… but they sent it to us because we agreed to stop getting bills. 🙄

I changed it. The online bills tell you what tariff you are on.

I’ve never understood why chargers can’t be designed so that they only draw power when they are plugged into something. Surely that can’t be hard to do?

They are a fire risk as well.

I have a British Gas one (monitoring electricity ironical) always watching it. Too the point that some lights are no longer switched on in danger of “angering” the monitor.

Just checked mine – £6.73 for the last 7 days which is a lot more than normal as I’ve had the week off.

I’ve also realised that the tv is on with no sound and I haven’t watched or listened to anything since I switched it on at 0900 for 15 minutes of news !

Off now!

Hi Harry.

Is that a plug-in one? I bought one a couple of years ago from B&Q and was disappointed that it would only measure down to about 5 watts. Anything less and it said zero. No point looking at all the little transformers and stuff because it wouldn’t record. I took it back and told them it was unfit for it’s use.

I did then borrow a very good one (from the library!). It’s intersting to compare how inefficient the cheapo (eg Ikea) lamps can be compared to better brands.

Must buy a good one.

The display is plug in. There is a transmitter with a collar attached round one of the leads on the electricity meter.

Chris my housemate fitted one of these a few weeks ago. We had a bit of fun turning stuff on and off. If drove him a bit nuts. As someone said it’s the big stuff that seems to make the difference, so we’re trying to eat at the same time rather than separately using the cooker, so I suppose it’s made a difference to how we use stuff. I think we’ve all become a bit more aware of leaving stuff on though which is a good thing.

No point looking at all the little transformers and stuff because it wouldn’t record. I took it back and told them it was unfit for it’s use.

Yeah it’s more a “household aggregate” type of thing. If you want to check individual gadgets then I’d suggest something like a Kill-A-Watt

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_A_Watt

Our bill has halved since we got the meter….haven’t changed behaviour much, just unplugged a load of crap that was ‘always on’ and was constantly totting up the bill 24hrs a day. Nintendo Wii was the worst offender.