CurrentCost has been a bit of a buzz going round Hursley for a few weeks now.
I’ve been resisting the temptation to get involved, because I know how obsessive I get about stuff, and I’m a bit busy at the moment to take on another new obsession!
But last week, I weakened. It was all looking a bit too cool, so I figured I had to give it a go.
I’m a few weeks behind the other guys at Hursley, so I’ve not got much to add that hasn’t already been said yet. Still, I have a few readers from outside the IBM group, so thought I’d share links to posts I’ve been following about what other IBMers have been up to, and add my first impressions.
What is it?
A gadget you attach to your electric meter to let you see how much electricity you are using at home, and how much it is costing you.
How does it work?
It comes in two parts – the first is the bit you attach to the electric meter.
It’s an inductive loop that you put around the cable going into the meter, so there’s nothing complex or dangerous to do with your mains box!
It’s attached to a black box with a battery and transmitter in – which sends a measurement every six seconds to the second part:
A LCD display panel
This receives the measurements from the transmitter and displays information about your current usage, together with cumulative totals showing usage from the last day, week and month.
Where do you get it from?
Some electricity providers have started to give them away for free to new customers or customers on eco-friendly tarriffs. And Southern Electric are selling them online.
What does it show?
You see how much electricity you are using now. And when you switch something on or off, it flashes up the difference: e.g. “UP 800W” or “DOWN 200W”, together with info about how much that costs. So when you switch something on, you can see how much that costs you to run.
There is something cool (albeit in a geeky way) when we switch on our 900W microwave, and see the CurrentCost meter value jump by roughly 900W!
What’s next?
The CurrentCost meter and display don’t store data. They keep some running totals – so you can see how much you used in the last day, evening and night, as well as running totals for the last 1, 7 and 30 days. But nothing more detailed than that.
But in the bottom of the LCD display is a little serial port, and if you connect it to a computer, it will pass on the data it receives from the transmitter.
The next step is to try this, and start playing with the data.
Catching up
Like I said, I’m a few weeks behind my friends. Here are some posts they’ve been writing about their meters:
Initial thoughts: Rich, Ian, Andy, Nick
Looking at the XML data you get out of the meter: Rich
Turning the data into graphs and charts: Nick, Roo
Identifying spikes in the graphs: Andy, Rich, Chris
What else can we do with the data: Chris
A home server
My next step is to get a home server to connect it to – if I only connect it to my laptop, I can only measure data when I’m at home using my computer. I need something small, cheap and low-powered that I can leave on all the time to capture the CurrentCost data.
I’ve bought myself a SLUG for this, and will write another post once I’ve got it set up. Deciding on an approach for this has been made much easier by James’ posts on choosing the hardware and an OS.
Finally, a warning…
It’s worryingly addictive. As I go round the house finding things to turn off and unplug to get the usage down as low as I can get it, I fear I may already be driving my wife bonkers. Plus, I may have given her another reason to get me turn off the XBox! 😉
Tags: currentcost, gadgets
Thanks for an interesting post. I have a plug in device that does a similar thing & it’s addictive and it doesn’t tell me the delta in such a clear way as yours
Sounds easier and cheaper than going this route (although you loose out on some of the home automation bits)
http://www.automatedhome.co.uk/New-Products/Z-Wave-Smart-Utility-Metering-Application.html
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Current Cost Monitor…
A couple of guys at work have managed to lay their hands on a funky new device called a Current Cost meter. It’s pretty simple to understand, it measures your household electricity usage and displays……
Hi Dale,
I don’t know if you got my @reply on Twitter, but if you’re stuck for things to talk about at BathCamp, I’d love to hear about the CurrentCost 🙂
Cheers,
Tim
@Tim – hi, I did, thanks. It’s not a bad idea, thanks!
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Absolutely fantastic mind blowing thing
Just bought one of this gadget and is highly addictive.
Think that in the near future the distributors will have to offer energy meters that will be always online.
From the Dominican Republic.
Osvaldo Gonzalez
A handy monitor which provokes careful usage of electrical items. However, the temperature reading on my unit when checked against numerous comparison thermometers has shown to be a minimum of 2 degrees Centigrade higher than actual. I contacted Currentcost to query the fact over a year ago and have not received a response, which makes me think that it is intentional, to persuade people to turn down their heating further than they would normally. I would chose another brand in future as I feel that deception is not the way to go with energy saving.