Over the past few years, I’ve been an avid consumer of home-based energy monitoring solutions. I fit in that 1% of actual consumers that will invest in energy monitoring and management but don’t have any clear ROI. These are gadgets for these sake of gadgets, but I have a intense curiosity to know what’s actually going on in my house (and what stochastic process are at play!). I have TED and Ploggs and have followed the Berkeley ACME project and other home-build solutions (ala: instructables.com).
First, the results. I travel quite a bit, and that means most of my energy savings is actually from finding the optimum configuration of my appliances while I’m away. I was averaging about 500 Watts when I started using TED. But now my steady state “away” power consumption is 150 Watts. That’s a savings of $30 per month if I’m traveling the whole time. Not groundbreaking, but enough to pay for my monitoring devices in less than a year. Add to that the fact that PG&E keeps giving me rebates for “cutting consumption during peak winter periods.” In the last 6 months, that’s resulted in a $25 Visa gift card and a $30 bill rebate. Not bad, about $80 in PG&E bill savings plus $55 in incentives, or $135 savings over a 6 month period.
Despite these fine results, why hasn’t home energy management and monitoring taken off? Why has Google PowerMeter shut its doors? Why was Microsoft Hohm shut down last month?