Clipsal CENT-A-METER- Feel Guilty All over your House
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 08. 8.05
Here is what every guilt-ridden Treehugger needs- a portable device that measures your electricity use and contribution to greenhouse gas while you move about your house and do things that consume electricity. Or not. Give me another device for my belt that measures and totals the calories I eat and compares it to the exercise I get and I may just stay in bed with the lights out.
A sensor is connected to the main line, and broadcasts a signal up to 30 metres to the receiver. One ominous use of the device: It Is a remote reading monitor developed to meet community demands for energy efficiency. Not only you but perhaps your community can be watching.
"Knowledge about the amount of power used enables consumers to make informed decisions about choosing energy efficient appliances, use of sustainable "green power" source, reduction of stand-by power losses and re-scheduling of unnecessary consumption during peak load periods. The monitoring of ambient comfort levels inside the home encourages efficient use of space heating and air-conditioning that are substantial energy users.
"The Clipsal CENT-A-METER™ comprises of a sensor, wireless transmitter and receiver. The sensor is a clip-on current transformer that samples the electric current on each active phase wire inside the switchboard.
These readings are aggregated and relayed by the 433 MHz wireless transmitter to the remote receiver/monitor. The receiver computes the approximate power use, energy cost and greenhouse gas generation and displays the results on a large portable LCD screen. Consumers can input specific country currency and voltage, electricity tariff rate, greenhouse gas conversion factor and peak load alarm value."
Buy "green power" and save yourself the guilt.
I have one of these!! It's expensive but my company bought it for R&D purposes. It works great, simple to install (even though an electrician is meant to do it...) and easy to use. Only thing is that it has no "Cumulative" usage reading, which kinda sucks. I think this is something to do with the fact that people would be comparing it against their utility bills, which are rarely based on actual usuage but rather on norms and averages. But anyway, good device and definately makes you try and keep the kilowatts down!
The comment "which are rarely based on actual usuage but rather on norms and averages" is totally incorrect. Basically all electricity consumption is metered.
In the UK this is marketed as the "Electrisave", in case any Brits want to get hold of one. I've had one installed for several months now and it works really well.