jods

Ordinarily I wouldn't have bothered. I have, however, been given one for free. Not just any old monitor - An M&S Monitor so it must be good!

Time now is 23:55 and apparently I'm burning 11.49p an hour!
Does anyone else have one? I did notice the cost went up to nearly 50p an hour when we ran the dishwasher before 9pm.

I'm a bit of a target driven/process improvement/competitive sort of bloke.

If you have one of these new-fangled devices can you post up your minimum / maximum per hour costs please.

I haven't yet set it up with peak / off peak "Zones" so it is based on 21p per "Unit" (kW?) 24/7

Bit embarrassing to admit this but I haven't looked at a bill for Leccy in a long long time. Perhaps I should! Just saved around £20 a month by talking to Sky and removing a few channels that the wife and I never watched - The daughter did watch them, but as she contributes precisely nil into the pot - TOUGH

Every penny / pound saved on Leccy etc can go right into the fund for toys for the Scooby

Coffin Dodger

I got a free one from nPower, hooked it up, thought that's interesting and it's now gathering dust though in part due to the fact I'm living in amongst a building site at the moment.

Once things are back to normal I may pay it a bit more attention but we are pretty good with turning stuff off and I'm not going to lose sleep over how much running the dishwasher costs

SJ_Skyline

We use one as after we came off a fixed tariff we found our bills creeping up.

We aim to keep under 16KwH per day (family of four) and I would say we meet that goal about 4 days in 7. The main thing I find I notice the impact of certain appliances and activities, cooking for example.

richs2891

I was given one about 6 months ago by Eon and never used until last week,
Its handy to see what items are using a lot of electricity and do you really need them on, but its easy to turn into a Ecofreak with them.
Noticed that any item that heats ie kettle or the cookers uses lots of electricity.
Lol went and bought some pir led battery lights for walk ways now - saves turning the light on !

Richard

Coffin Dodger

So are you going to eat only salads from now on

I just don't get it, it's obvious things like ovens, hobs, kettles etc. use a lot of power. Still wouldn't stop me using them, just use the oven for the minimum time possible, i.e. heat up, put in food as soon as it's at temperature, cook for however long required, take food out / turn off oven. Leave the door open to let the heat out into the house

Dunk

iTrader: (1)

Had an OWL for a bit, until the batteries went, then was faced with the ironic situation of having to buy batteries to show if I was saving electricity.
Bloody confusing this green lark.

D

JackClark

I've just plugged mine in to save electricity, doesn't feel right.

If you're a PC user you can use Google Powermeter with the e.on provided monitor.

http://www.currentcost.com/powermeter/download.php

I think I prefer my old Owl one, but like Dunk the batteries ran out.

GC8

10p per KWh is a more realistic figure, I think. I was given one by EON recently, but it was massive and made of relatively poor plastics, so I havent set it up. I have a smaller/smarter unit that Ive had for about a year.

It came as a surprise to see that if Id bought a new fridge freezer in December, that itd have paid for itself more than once in one year; in saved electricity!

Currently using 3.3p per hour, but thats because this old Mac is power-hungry...

Simon C

How do these things work? I keep getting flyers from Eon about them? Do you have to have the transmitter plugged into to each socket ot do they strap to the meter?

BTW eon want me to cough up £45 for 1, and as I have 2 mains circuits in this flat (on eco 7 tariff) that could get to silly costs.

ChrisB

The one we got from nPower has a little transmitter than clips onto the incoming mains feed at the consumer unit, then has a display unit which plugs into the mains.

Simon C

Thats what I thought. The trasmitter would have to be pretty strong to work at my place, I live in a flat with a communal meter space, a good 40 feet from my flat.

JackClark

Do you have a fuse box in your flat?

The free E.On one is massive and should have battery back up. But it works and the price was right.

Simon C

No, RCD and all the wires are in the walls.

EddScott

Ours is E.On. its not pretty but it does the job and being free theres no reason to say no.

I have noticed that we have a constant 140w in the background all the time - might be the fridge. Thinks that surprised me in power useage is the TV - about 240w. If the downstairs TV is on, my PC is on with the receiver for playing games and the nipper has her TV on upstairs we over 1Kw.

It hasn't really changed the way we use our power but its interesting to see the useage of different items.

Leslie

Does it take much electricity to run the unit?

Les

JackClark

If you want to take full advantage then you need to run a PC as well. My house is a lot worse off since receiving the unit. But it's fun eh!