I have been watching energy circle for an announcement of the new PowerHouse Dynamics eMonitor.

I have been monitoring circuits individually using a SC20 from Wattsup meters from the beginning. I gave up waiting for the TED 500 I had on order, and have found that I do not need it now.

I have some questions on this amount of monitoring for the average home owner, but for the enthusiast this device is the real deal. The actions we need to take are well understood. We have replaced the light bulbs and I do not need a display to remind me to turn off and not use as we agreed. This may not be a popular idea to the manufacturers of displays who want me to believe I need to be reminded regularly. I am glad to see one manufacturer saying the display can also be used as wall picture display unit, when not being used to show energy data.

I will be putting my energy investment dollars into a smart thermostat which is where I can see smart actions that will save additional energy. There are times we do not get home when planned. Being able to turn the heat on while driving home would be energy efficient.

I did need to measure power factor correction, and now that I have, I assure you that I have still to find anything that looks like it could possibly benefit from power factor correction. Do look at the list of energy saving scams on the menu to your top left.

Back to where I was. I was not surprised to find a post from Peter Troast of energy circle saying "Yesterday we installed the PowerHouse Dynamics eMonitor, the most recent entrant in the home energy electricity monitoring category for consumers."

The article is well presented with some excellent photographs of the equipment in its installed position. I do agree with Peter that you need a qualified electrician to do the work needed in the open distribution board, even with the power off.

I would also remind energy monitors that a clamp on monitor is sufficiently accurate to manage your energy use. But you need the volts on each circuit to accurately calculate the power factor. The Wattsup meter requires the circuit to be disconnected and rewired through the actual monitor.

 

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