Wattson: Monitor Your Home's Energy Usage
by Collin Dunn, Corvallis, OR, USA 
on 07. 6.06
Wattson is a clever device that monitors the energy usage in your home. Turning any appliance of, off, or switching it to standby creates an immediate effect, showing how much power the appliance takes to run, and how much money it costs to keep it running. There are two parts to Wattson; a sensor that lives near the home's electricity supply, and the wireless, handheld display that can be taken anywhere in the home, so you can tell if the microwave or toaster uses more electricity. iPod-esque styling makes it easy to leave it on the coffee table or in the kitchen without causing an eyesore, and the two modes (instantaneous power consumption and overall cost per year) help equate electricity usage with spending money. To wit: a 100W light bulb left on for a year might cost $130; switching it to a 18W low-energy bulb would drop it to about $33. Connect Wattson to a computer, and you can become part of an online community, collaborating to see how individual energy savings are making a big difference as a collective. We think it's a great way to help contextualize your home's energy usage -- it really adds up. ::Wattson via ::Hugg
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The most important part is, IMO, the feedback on how much energy you use. It works the same way that the LCD displays in hybrid cars do - it modifies your behavior because you can see how your actions affect things.
Let me save some of you the trouble of making the jump; the website says these are each hand made, cost 440 Pounds (That's $809.78 for us Americans as of July, 03) Plus shipping and handling, and take 4 to 6 weeks to ship.
I will say that I like this gadget very much, but it is a very expensive premium to pay for something that could be regulated by data trending your electricity bills from the past 4 to 5 years. No, this method is not as precise on the minute by minute basis, and is not nearly as fashion conscious, but data trending and analysis will give you realistic energy usage trends based on time of year, number of persons, and can even identify key component usage that drives costs higher, like that hot tub in winter or the chocolate fondue pot on bridge night. And it's free (as well as not creating any new or additional carbon charges for manufacturing plants, shipping, storage, resources, materials, etc.). What's more, you'll finally have a use for that MS Excel package that you paid for when you bought your computer.
However, I'm a gadget guy and so I say again... I like it.
While not as high tech (does not equate with $$ saved/spent on electricity, but this is something you can figure out without much difficulty), consider the difference in price for these basic energy usage meters ($30-50):
http://www.kansaswindpower.net/meters.htm
it would be great if it displayed the ~36,000 watts burned with every gallon of car fuel, so people can put the lightbulbs and other comparatively minuscule household uses in context. DOE stats for 2001 put household vehicular energy expenditures are 1.5 times all other household uses combined.
I have one of these, which is similar to the wattson monitor but much less expensive (only $29.99)... though not as fancy.
http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/7657/
I've used it to test most of the gadgets around my house, and also made the choice to replace our refridgerator because of it (new fridge uses 448kwhs/year vs over 1100kwhs/year).
I also now use my laptop a lot more than desktop because of the difference in power usage (both are comparable in performance).
Great point Todd.
I have a plug in meter that I use alot and it does let you really understand the scale of power usage.
But do you think people will be really receptive to having your power consumption in your face all the time? Most modern houses/businesses hide this away, and that helps create the modern feeling of unlimited power, always at hand. You just plug something in the wall and it works. It will take a lot to unpick the habits learned over the past 50-60 years.
I have a spinning electric meter on the outside of the house that does the same thing, and my electric company provides it for "free".
It's a bit scary to see it come almost to a complete stop when the air conditioner and refrigerator both turn off...
this is a great idea I have been toying with this idea for some time a clamp on amp probe jaws around the incoming live or neutral mains supply connected to a transmitter sending signal to receiving unit showing amps used or k/watts cost for usage at present and total for bill periods so you can switch off appliances to save money and keep costs under control I prefer receiving unit to be plugged a socket and not battery powered .as the other power consumption units these only register individual appliances Charles uk
Jesus. Whose going to pay that sort of money? And why would you want to carry it round the house after the first week of excitement. Can I suggest the Electrisave? http://www.electrisave.co.uk/
It costs £80 ($150).
I like the idea of the community, but you should be able to buy just the sensor and connect via wifi with and hand held device, like an iPhone.
What an amazingly overpriced product! "Hand made?" Who cares? Give me a functional product for $60 and I'll buy one. What's even more ironic is that I have a 4.7kw solar rig and I haven't been able to find a whole-house monitor that can cope with external generation *and* internal consumption.
You can buy this produce new on ebay.co.uk for £90. In response to my question about monitoring two power sources the Wattson helpdesk advised that:
"It gives separate readings for renewable energy. So in saying that, if you were to monitor both circuits with the other sensor plugged into the renewable socket and your wattson enabled in renewable mode. Then once you collect data with holmes and extract the data into a CSV file, you will be able to see the data of socket 1 and the data of the renewable socket. Note: Your wattson needs to have the latest firmware uploaded. This is denoted by the wattson having 1 cluster of LEDs as opposed to 5 clusters of LEDs when in "NIGHT MODE".
FYI TED5000 model is coming soon. Check out the web site for more info. www.theenergydetective.com.