Live View
My green home upgrade continues with the addition of a product from a company name The Energy Detective called TED 5000. Basically this is a meter that let’s me keep an eye on energy usage with both the feed from Xcelenergy (the power company here) and my solar panels. It’s something only a guy could love (the geeky graphs and huge amounts of data), but on the side, also lets me know, down to the watt, what each device in the house is using. I’ve attached a couple more “sample pictures” after the break below.
It has a “live mode” (the picture on the left) where I can watch real time as I turn on things like:
- TV (100-600 watts, depending on if it’s displaying a predominantly black or white screen)
- Clothes Dryer (a scary 6,300+ watts)
- Oven (2,500 watts) and burners (2,800 watts each) [which explains why I don’t cook!]
- The furnace (1,100 watts for the blower motor) [which explains why I keep the house at 64 degrees day, and 55 night]
I haven’t gone around measuring everything yet, but may do something like that over the long weekend. I’m really curious how much energy all the little power bricks I have for all the little devices take. I’m betting it’s going to be a surprising number.
The company still has some work to do on the software that comes with the product (quite a few minor bugs, and a couple major ones (like mis-labeling outputs on graphs). The appear totally overwhelmed by the popularity of their products, and are trying to ramp up support, but they’re not there yet. Be prepared to be “on your own” for a while. But, for the most part, it works OK, and provides information I simply didn’t have before.
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