Electricity Usage Meters.

[mosaix]

I had some electrical work done in the house by a friend (a registered electrician ) the week before last and the topic of electricity usage came up. He let me have a usage meter at cost. I wouldn't normally have bought one but cost price made me think again.

It's a two part device. One is clipped around the outlet cable of your meter. It measures the current and transmits it via a radio signal. The other part is a receiver and LCD display. You can record your pence-per-kilowatt-hour in the receiver so that the display can be either in watts or cost.

It's easy to become obsessive with these things, walking round the house turning things on and off to see just how much they are costing. However the thing the surprised me the most was the washing machine. Okay I know it's heavy on electricity whilst heating water but just on standby it's drawing 20 watts! And has been doing day and night for the last 13 years - even when we've been away on holiday!

Let me explain what I mean by standby. Once the machine had finished its cycle we just open the door and take out the clothes - leaving the power button in the 'on' position. Next time we use it we load the clothes, close the door and to get the cycled started press the power button to 'off' the 'on' and off it goes.

Anyway, I can't imagine how it uses 20 watts just sitting there. There aren't even any indicator lights. Probably some micro-processor.

At my pence-per-kilowatt-hour I reckon it's cost me £320 over the 13 years it's been sitting there doing nothing.

 

[Ursa major]

Grief. That's a lot of money. But at least now you'll know to switch it off.



As an aside, presumably both parts of the usage meter require power.

 

[mosaix]

As an aside, presumably both parts of the usage meter require power.

Yeah, they're both battery powered, UM.

BTW I made a mistake in my original post. The transmitter is attached to the outlet cable of the main fuse - the inlet to the meter.

Like I said, it's easy to get obsessive about the thing but one of its advantages is that you get used to what is the 'normal' for your house.

Last thing at night the norm for my house is about 100 watts. That seemed a lot at first but there are lots of thing on overnight - fridge freezer, PVR (on standby), telephone, fish tank pumps (pet-sitting my daughters fish), microwave digital display, central heating / hot water boiler and controls etc. A quick glance tells me if I've left anything unnecessarily switched on. The commonest things are computers, TVs and outside lights.

 

[Dr Zoidberg]

It soon adds up, doesn't it.
As a rule of thumb, 1 Watt for a year costs you about a pound at current [1] prices, so you can quickly work out what's worth switching off like your washing machine [2], and what's not like a TV that uses less than 1 watt on standby.

I've also got one of the individual plug socket meters which are handy for testing devices one at a time.

[1] Sorry!
[2] Must check my Dishwasher

 

[StormSeeker]

When we moved into our new private let we had a meter like this that uses the key which you top up. Pay as you go.

And wow, we were obsessive. We realised that the fridge alone took up a good 30p per day! A shower could cost anywhere between 20p and 1.50 depending on who was in it. ( Our ex flatmate would take hour long showers >.< )

If my boyfriend stays up all night, as does my other flatmate and they're both on their PCs all night...wow. You wake up and its £3 down. Scary stuff.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

Our libraries now have the "Kill-o-watt" meters that you can use to measure electricity used by any given device. You can just check one out like a book, take it home and measure everything.

I ...err... haven't. If I took one of those home, my husband would get even worse about obsessively turning off lights and we'd have to kill him. It would be messy.

 

[mosaix]

Our libraries now have the "Kill-o-watt" meters that you can use to measure electricity used by any given device. You can just check one out like a book, take it home and measure everything.

Brilliant idea!