Behouden Power Meter by Thomas J Owen
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 03. 5.07
We have shown a number of energy management devices like the Kill-a-watt- most are utilitarian and without much thought to how they look. British designer Thomas James Owen proposes the Behouden wall clock/power display - it reads the electrical consumption of the house and displays it in kilowatt-hours and pounds sterling. It is made from fully recycled and recyclable materials.
The clock would be "sold with replacement BUS standard fuses that will directly replace the existing ones in the fuse box. These fuses contain an electronic system that records the amps that flow through them. The data is sent to the clock via a wireless system that interprets this into a monetary value" ::Thomasjowen
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Another fantastic thing along these lines, but the marvelous Natalie Jeremijenko:
http://xdesign.ucsd.edu/mainmenu/projectarchive2.html
then scroll through the menu and click on Dumb PowerMeter
The gist is you have to guess how much electricity you've been using before the meter will display the information. Rad.
I'm no expert, but this would be illegal in the USA on so many levels.
The biggest being that all new houses here have magnetic circuit breakers.
Although this could be easily adapted to be fully functional in here.
Uh, I'm pretty sure every single house has it's own power meter, provided by free of charge by the utility company, as they tend to take a casual interest in how much power their customers use. For both gas and hydro. They have numbers. You read the numbers. Very high tech. I'm pretty sure they're made from recyclable materials, as well, like ... metal. You could put some woodgrain MacTac on them, if that's your bag.
Hi,
There are two commercially available home power meters listed here:
http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/Conservation/conservation.htm#meter
I use the "Power Cost Meter". It works well, and was easy to install. My only slight problem with it is that it only updates around every 10 seconds, so its hard to determine the added load for something new that you plug in. I think that the way the TED one works might make it better for this, but the TED one is more difficult to install.
I have definitely learned from watching it.
Gary
Can it be programmed to have an annoying HAL voice? "Dave, I think you'll find your hair-drying episode has cost us fifty cents. Do you think that's a good use of our money?"