7 ms·

Tom has a new crush. It's called the WattVision Energy Monitor.

62 points by pg 17y ago

gruseom 17y ago
Yay Savraj!
- gridspy 17y ago
  He is getting some serious PR. A class act.
gcb 17y ago
You actually have to install something to get this graph? In Brazil you get a graph of your consumption for the last 12 months. printed with the bill every month. http://www.eletropaulo.com.br/portal/download.cfm?pasta_id=317 http://www.eletropaulo.com.br/portal/download.cfm?pasta_id=3... (page 3, item 18)
- pkulak 17y ago
  I get a simple graph on my bill too. But this is real-time and instantaneous measurement. There's a bit of a difference.
  - jodrellblank 17y ago
    "real-time" ish. I like the way they switch a light off, then stare at the iPhone for a few seconds to tell them it's gone dark. ;) Joking aside, I didn't know meters had "LED ports on them(IR?) and assumed these sorts of devices would have to be complex and measure current somehow. It's another place where I think "great, but I don't want it streaming to the cloud, can't I host it myself?". Follow up thought: I'll be much more willing to host things myself for internal use when SSDs are common enough to mean small computers can be completely silent.
    - wesley 17y ago
      For this particular device it would mean that they would loose their monthly subscription (as I don't think people would accept to pay a monthly fee for a clientside app). This is their business model.
      - jodrellblank 17y ago
        It seems terrible to have a device in my house measuring electricity (the meter), then put a reader on it, stream the data over wifi, over the internet, to a company with a bank of servers and several full time employees then process it then stream it back over the mobile phone network, all in the interest of saving energy.
        tomharrisonjr 17y ago
        I think the folks at WattVision would concur completely. It's kind of crazy, and the idea of Smart Meters would eliminate the light sensor and wire part of the deal. I would guess that WattVision and the others in this growing market are banking on the idea that 1) the electric utilities in the US move incredibly slowly, and 2) it's not just about electricity, and even if you got a smart meter for electricity, those of us who live in cold places tend to heat with natural gas and oil -- in my house our electricity use is only 20% of our total energy use (kWh of electricity compared to kWh of gas). In other words, this market may be like the fax machine, which was made obsolete by the Internet almost before it was introduced three decades or so ago ... yet, they're still around :-).
        electromagnetic 17y ago
        I still wonder why the fax machine is in such use when it offers lower reliability than the internet, I wonder if it's for security reasons. The worst you'll ever got through fax is either hatemail or someone photocopying their butt and faxing you it. However, your entire system can be taken down if you're not properly protected from receiving a single malicious email. Now, back to the topic. I live in southern Ontario and virtually every building is heated by natural gas, and in more rural locals oil is more common, however the prices have begun matching between gas and oil where it has to be delivered. The only properties I see that are heated electrically are in apartment buildings where heat is only truly lost through far less than 1/6th of your property's surface area.
  - axod 17y ago
    In the UK you can get this from your supplier. They send you out a little unit that shows your current usage, cost etc etc.
    - tomharrisonjr 17y ago
      I think the device is called "Alert Me", or perhaps they are using The Owl or the CurrentCost.
- tomharrisonjr 17y ago
  I got the same graph on my bill. It was helpful. But when I turn on a light, the graph updates in a few seconds. It's brilliant (but then, well, I have a crush on it, according to energycircle.com)
- breck 17y ago
  > graph of your consumption for the last 12 months Monthly graphs would be somewhat helpful. For example, you could decipher that the AC uses a lot of power if the graph spikes in summer. Daily graphs would be way more helpful. For example, you can see how much you saved on a day where you were out and used no power. Hourly graphs would be still more helpful. If you knew you watched TV from 8-9, you could see the cost of an hour of TV. Real time graphs are the ultimate. Not only do you get all the benefits of the above graphs, but you can go around your house flipping switches and see exactly how much each appliance costs to run. You can spend an hour messing around and reduce your power bill significantly--a savings which you'll realize every month.
  - wesley 17y ago
    I don't need this device to tell me that standby devices waste power. Just install some power strips and turn it off completely. I don't see much other use for a device like this if you've already eliminated standby devices. Sure, it can tell you that your fridge is wasting alot of electricity, but that's what the energy labels are for (A++ etc)
    - dandelany 17y ago
      If you're already very energy-conscious, I can see your point. However, most people probably don't think about how much power their standby (and operational, but unnecessary) devices consume. An analogy: I don't need Mint to tell me I waste money. Of course, I try to minimize the amount of money that I waste, but some is inevitably spend on stupid things. However, Mint is a tool that helps me identify exactly when and where I'm wasting the most money, which informs the financial decisions I make.
      - wesley 17y ago
        Well, I don't think those people would even buy such a device. Only people that are aware of their energy usage and actively want to reduce it would want a device like this. Of course if they got a deal with an energy supplier and got this installed for free in all houses it'd be a different matter entirely.
wesley 17y ago
Something like http://www.currentcost.com http://www.currentcost.com is much cheaper, has a one time cost, includes a display, and can send statistics to several user contributed apps as well. A new version is due soon which will _probably_ introduce wireless transfer to the pc and compatibility with google powermeter..
- tomharrisonjr 17y ago
  I have tested the currentcost and it's a different thing in some ways -- WattVision has the distinct advantage of not requiring you to open the electrical box, for one, but also doesn't have a display (yet). CurrentCost is all about the monitor, similar to Owl. I think everyone is working towards some sort of online feed; TED 5000 has one that hooks to Google PowerMeter, but WattVision is a somewhat simpler and more extensible design IMHO. Honestly, I like them all -- monitoring electricity has helped me identify innumerable little ways to use less; the big picture is that I now use about 1/2 the electricity I did a few years ago.
  - jodrellblank 17y ago
    Are you using less electricity to do the same things, or are you living differently in order to lower your electricity use because electricity use is in your focus? If so, would those changes be annoying to live with if you weren't so interested in your electricity use - if you tried to get a random person to reduce their electricity use in the same ways, would they say "sod that, it sounds too hard/stupid/cheap/complex"?
    - tomharrisonjr 17y ago
      This is a really good question. To be sure, there's a selection bias going on here, which I think explains why I have been able to reduce our household consumption by more than 50%, where in controlled studies (e.g. by utilities that have installed similar meters in their houses) observed reductions are around 15%. But I would also say that I have done this over the course of several years, and while many reductions were ones I got with no pain or expense almost immediately, others were ones where I bought a new router, for example, that allowed me to get rid of my fileserver/router setup. I bought several BITS Smart Strips to reduce phantom load. None of these change my lifestyle in any way, but they do require some initiative. Tom
jws 17y ago
If your meter looks like a spinning disk, you're out of luck—for now. I have read where a fellow used an LED and a photodetector to watch his spinning disc and measure how long it takes to go around. Sadly I can't find the web page anymore. Still, it is possible.
- ShabbyDoo 17y ago
  I wonder if one can ask his electric company to upgrade his meter?
  - savrajsingh 17y ago
    You can, depends on your power company.
- easyfrag 17y ago
  You're only out of luck if you want a detailed history or to view it on the web, plenty of monitoring devices exist that are compatible with the analog models. http://blackanddecker.com/Energy/PowerMonitor.aspx?WT.mc_id=BDPowerMonitor http://blackanddecker.com/Energy/PowerMonitor.aspx?WT.mc_id=...
- tomharrisonjr 17y ago
  The BlueLine PowerCost monitor (same as the Black and Decker version) both have sensors that, in addition to reading digital meters, can read the black line on the analog meters. There's no reason that WattVision couldn't do exactly the same thing. It's primitive, to be sure, but it works.
maxklein 17y ago
This looks very cool. I wish I could get my hands on one.
F_J_H 17y ago
I work in the Energy/Utility field and just got back from a “Smart Gird” conference where smart meters (i.e. real time interval metering) was discussed at length. Although these types of devices are really cool to “energy geeks” like me, if you look at the energy used today at the author’s house, it amounts to less than a cup of coffee at Starbucks. So, the big question is, until electricity prices really increase (which would be a nightmare for politicians), will the average person really care? I love the device and think it is a great concept, but I wonder if it will have a very wide appeal.
- wheels 17y ago
  It might make more sense in e.g. European markets where electricity costs 3x as much per kW/h.
- tomharrisonjr 17y ago
  Well, I am the guy that lives at the author's house. We are saving over $100/month as a result of the reductions we have made. I agree with your general position, but there's at least a niche market out there, and growing rather fast, actually.
  - F_J_H 17y ago
    That is interesting. At the Smart Energy conference I spoke about, one Canadian utility that has implemented smart meters and Time of Use pricing found virtually no evidence that people were reducing their consumption. If anything, load was shifted from peak periods to the off peak periods on the weekend. You would have been a great example of what they were hoping for. I am curious though. If you are using about .09 or .10 an hour in total (for the brief period I looked at the graph), how were you able to achieve such high savings? Did you get rid of unnecessary appliances, or simply find ways to reduce consumption?
    - tomharrisonjr 17y ago
      I had found some reasonably scientific research done a while back in a pilot program showing 15% reduction by otherwise passive people. I can't find the study now, so I could be full of it :-) Actually, shifting to off-peak is a good outcome since fewer spinning reserve plants (usually the least efficient) are needed. But, as you say, not really the desired outcome. My baseline use tends to run at about 300W. We first did obvious things like replace some of our lighting with CFL, and we got rid of an old chest freezer we didn't need. We changed behavior through learning to turn off lights when we left a room. There were some no-brainer things (my stereo apparently allows multi-room hookups, and if you have the buttons turned on, it uses several hundred watts to do nothing. I replaced a fileserver + routers with an Apple Time Capsule and saved 100+ watts. We use the dryer differently. And we installed a few BITS smart strips. The reason our savings are high is partly because I live in the Boston area, where our electricity rate is currently $0.19/kWh, I think. Bottom line was that we made a lot of little changes. I have written about most of them in my personal blog, called fivepercent.us if you're interested.
wmf 17y ago
Can someone explain the difference between a digital meter and a smart meter?
- tomharrisonjr 17y ago
  A digital meter doesn't have a spinning dial, it reads current a different way. It is able to transmit its readings in several forms, bnoth through a display on the front, but mainly they were designed to allow remote meter reading by the power company -- drive by, instead of having to actually look at the dials. A smart meter is a digital meter but that can intercommunicate -- over a network -- either with the rest of the electric grid system, or even with devices inside your house.
  - wmf 17y ago
    Regrettably, I am still not enlightened. Isn't remote meter reading a form of communication over a network?
    - gridspy 17y ago
      Normal and digital meters can only be read by physically visiting the property. Sometimes you don't have to physically look at Digital meters because they have a RF signal. Smart meters transmit their power data through the power lines somewhat like ADSL over the phone lines. At the substation, they connect that to a normal network and can read your meter without visiting. In some cases smart meters work through the mobile phone network with GPRS or SMS messages. Even smarter meters can download instructions from the power company to turn off AC or change the cost of your electricity at different times of day. This would replace the current ripple controllers that do similar things with more limitations. Really cool meters have some sort of communications network within the house so the homeowner can purchase smart displays that talk to the meter and use it as a source of interesting information.
aminuit 17y ago
Not in the article, but worth mentioning: Wattvision is a YC Winter 09 company.
thinksketch 17y ago
I'm always glad to see developments in energy monitoring, but every time I see a tool that monitors a home's power meter it just leaves me wanting to see more. It seems that what we really need is a cheap electrical socket monitoring device so that we can get real-time data about each appliance in our house read out to a central web-app. It doesn't seem very useful to know your overall electricity usage - your energy bill tells you that. If we're going to do something about using too much power, we need to understand what the culprits are. I know that there are socket monitors on the market, but why do they all have expensive screens and buttons and stuff? It seems that they should be 10 times cheaper and feed their data straight to a web-app. http://www.thinksketchdesign.com/2009/02/11/design/green-design-design/the-kill-a-watt-killer-energy-monitors-should-be-10-times-cheaper http://www.thinksketchdesign.com/2009/02/11/design/green-des...
- mbergins 17y ago
  It doesn't seem very useful to know your overall electricity usage - your energy bill tells you that. Your monthly electricity bill does give you a monthly snapshot of your last month's usage, but the primary point of these devices appears to be moment to moment usage stats. The instantaneous data can act as a feedback mechanism that a monthly snapshot makes difficult. Integrating power monitoring at the device level would also be a nice step forward.
- gridspy 17y ago
  This low cost individual circuit monitoring is where Gridspy is going, although it will take some time (and high production volume) to get the price down that low. http://gridspy.co.nz/ http://gridspy.co.nz/

62 points by pg 17y ago

gruseom 17y ago

Yay Savraj!

gridspy 17y ago
He is getting some serious PR. A class act.

gcb 17y ago

You actually have to install something to get this graph? In Brazil you get a graph of your consumption for the last 12 months. printed with the bill every month. http://www.eletropaulo.com.br/portal/download.cfm?pasta_id=317 http://www.eletropaulo.com.br/portal/download.cfm?pasta_id=3... (page 3, item 18)

pkulak 17y ago
I get a simple graph on my bill too. But this is real-time and instantaneous measurement. There's a bit of a difference.
- jodrellblank 17y ago
  "real-time" ish. I like the way they switch a light off, then stare at the iPhone for a few seconds to tell them it's gone dark. ;) Joking aside, I didn't know meters had "LED ports on them(IR?) and assumed these sorts of devices would have to be complex and measure current somehow. It's another place where I think "great, but I don't want it streaming to the cloud, can't I host it myself?". Follow up thought: I'll be much more willing to host things myself for internal use when SSDs are common enough to mean small computers can be completely silent.
  - wesley 17y ago
    For this particular device it would mean that they would loose their monthly subscription (as I don't think people would accept to pay a monthly fee for a clientside app). This is their business model.
    - jodrellblank 17y ago
      It seems terrible to have a device in my house measuring electricity (the meter), then put a reader on it, stream the data over wifi, over the internet, to a company with a bank of servers and several full time employees then process it then stream it back over the mobile phone network, all in the interest of saving energy.
      - tomharrisonjr 17y ago
        I think the folks at WattVision would concur completely. It's kind of crazy, and the idea of Smart Meters would eliminate the light sensor and wire part of the deal. I would guess that WattVision and the others in this growing market are banking on the idea that 1) the electric utilities in the US move incredibly slowly, and 2) it's not just about electricity, and even if you got a smart meter for electricity, those of us who live in cold places tend to heat with natural gas and oil -- in my house our electricity use is only 20% of our total energy use (kWh of electricity compared to kWh of gas). In other words, this market may be like the fax machine, which was made obsolete by the Internet almost before it was introduced three decades or so ago ... yet, they're still around :-).
        electromagnetic 17y ago
        I still wonder why the fax machine is in such use when it offers lower reliability than the internet, I wonder if it's for security reasons. The worst you'll ever got through fax is either hatemail or someone photocopying their butt and faxing you it. However, your entire system can be taken down if you're not properly protected from receiving a single malicious email. Now, back to the topic. I live in southern Ontario and virtually every building is heated by natural gas, and in more rural locals oil is more common, however the prices have begun matching between gas and oil where it has to be delivered. The only properties I see that are heated electrically are in apartment buildings where heat is only truly lost through far less than 1/6th of your property's surface area.
- axod 17y ago
  In the UK you can get this from your supplier. They send you out a little unit that shows your current usage, cost etc etc.
  - tomharrisonjr 17y ago
    I think the device is called "Alert Me", or perhaps they are using The Owl or the CurrentCost.
tomharrisonjr 17y ago
I got the same graph on my bill. It was helpful. But when I turn on a light, the graph updates in a few seconds. It's brilliant (but then, well, I have a crush on it, according to energycircle.com)
breck 17y ago
> graph of your consumption for the last 12 months Monthly graphs would be somewhat helpful. For example, you could decipher that the AC uses a lot of power if the graph spikes in summer. Daily graphs would be way more helpful. For example, you can see how much you saved on a day where you were out and used no power. Hourly graphs would be still more helpful. If you knew you watched TV from 8-9, you could see the cost of an hour of TV. Real time graphs are the ultimate. Not only do you get all the benefits of the above graphs, but you can go around your house flipping switches and see exactly how much each appliance costs to run. You can spend an hour messing around and reduce your power bill significantly--a savings which you'll realize every month.
- wesley 17y ago
  I don't need this device to tell me that standby devices waste power. Just install some power strips and turn it off completely. I don't see much other use for a device like this if you've already eliminated standby devices. Sure, it can tell you that your fridge is wasting alot of electricity, but that's what the energy labels are for (A++ etc)
  - dandelany 17y ago
    If you're already very energy-conscious, I can see your point. However, most people probably don't think about how much power their standby (and operational, but unnecessary) devices consume. An analogy: I don't need Mint to tell me I waste money. Of course, I try to minimize the amount of money that I waste, but some is inevitably spend on stupid things. However, Mint is a tool that helps me identify exactly when and where I'm wasting the most money, which informs the financial decisions I make.
    - wesley 17y ago
      Well, I don't think those people would even buy such a device. Only people that are aware of their energy usage and actively want to reduce it would want a device like this. Of course if they got a deal with an energy supplier and got this installed for free in all houses it'd be a different matter entirely.

wesley 17y ago

Something like http://www.currentcost.com http://www.currentcost.com is much cheaper, has a one time cost, includes a display, and can send statistics to several user contributed apps as well. A new version is due soon which will _probably_ introduce wireless transfer to the pc and compatibility with google powermeter..

tomharrisonjr 17y ago
I have tested the currentcost and it's a different thing in some ways -- WattVision has the distinct advantage of not requiring you to open the electrical box, for one, but also doesn't have a display (yet). CurrentCost is all about the monitor, similar to Owl. I think everyone is working towards some sort of online feed; TED 5000 has one that hooks to Google PowerMeter, but WattVision is a somewhat simpler and more extensible design IMHO. Honestly, I like them all -- monitoring electricity has helped me identify innumerable little ways to use less; the big picture is that I now use about 1/2 the electricity I did a few years ago.
- jodrellblank 17y ago
  Are you using less electricity to do the same things, or are you living differently in order to lower your electricity use because electricity use is in your focus? If so, would those changes be annoying to live with if you weren't so interested in your electricity use - if you tried to get a random person to reduce their electricity use in the same ways, would they say "sod that, it sounds too hard/stupid/cheap/complex"?
  - tomharrisonjr 17y ago
    This is a really good question. To be sure, there's a selection bias going on here, which I think explains why I have been able to reduce our household consumption by more than 50%, where in controlled studies (e.g. by utilities that have installed similar meters in their houses) observed reductions are around 15%. But I would also say that I have done this over the course of several years, and while many reductions were ones I got with no pain or expense almost immediately, others were ones where I bought a new router, for example, that allowed me to get rid of my fileserver/router setup. I bought several BITS Smart Strips to reduce phantom load. None of these change my lifestyle in any way, but they do require some initiative. Tom

jws 17y ago

If your meter looks like a spinning disk, you're out of luck—for now. I have read where a fellow used an LED and a photodetector to watch his spinning disc and measure how long it takes to go around. Sadly I can't find the web page anymore. Still, it is possible.

ShabbyDoo 17y ago
I wonder if one can ask his electric company to upgrade his meter?
- savrajsingh 17y ago
  You can, depends on your power company.
easyfrag 17y ago
You're only out of luck if you want a detailed history or to view it on the web, plenty of monitoring devices exist that are compatible with the analog models. http://blackanddecker.com/Energy/PowerMonitor.aspx?WT.mc_id=BDPowerMonitor http://blackanddecker.com/Energy/PowerMonitor.aspx?WT.mc_id=...
tomharrisonjr 17y ago
The BlueLine PowerCost monitor (same as the Black and Decker version) both have sensors that, in addition to reading digital meters, can read the black line on the analog meters. There's no reason that WattVision couldn't do exactly the same thing. It's primitive, to be sure, but it works.

maxklein 17y ago

This looks very cool. I wish I could get my hands on one.

F_J_H 17y ago

I work in the Energy/Utility field and just got back from a “Smart Gird” conference where smart meters (i.e. real time interval metering) was discussed at length. Although these types of devices are really cool to “energy geeks” like me, if you look at the energy used today at the author’s house, it amounts to less than a cup of coffee at Starbucks. So, the big question is, until electricity prices really increase (which would be a nightmare for politicians), will the average person really care? I love the device and think it is a great concept, but I wonder if it will have a very wide appeal.

wheels 17y ago
It might make more sense in e.g. European markets where electricity costs 3x as much per kW/h.
tomharrisonjr 17y ago
Well, I am the guy that lives at the author's house. We are saving over $100/month as a result of the reductions we have made. I agree with your general position, but there's at least a niche market out there, and growing rather fast, actually.
- F_J_H 17y ago
  That is interesting. At the Smart Energy conference I spoke about, one Canadian utility that has implemented smart meters and Time of Use pricing found virtually no evidence that people were reducing their consumption. If anything, load was shifted from peak periods to the off peak periods on the weekend. You would have been a great example of what they were hoping for. I am curious though. If you are using about .09 or .10 an hour in total (for the brief period I looked at the graph), how were you able to achieve such high savings? Did you get rid of unnecessary appliances, or simply find ways to reduce consumption?
  - tomharrisonjr 17y ago
    I had found some reasonably scientific research done a while back in a pilot program showing 15% reduction by otherwise passive people. I can't find the study now, so I could be full of it :-) Actually, shifting to off-peak is a good outcome since fewer spinning reserve plants (usually the least efficient) are needed. But, as you say, not really the desired outcome. My baseline use tends to run at about 300W. We first did obvious things like replace some of our lighting with CFL, and we got rid of an old chest freezer we didn't need. We changed behavior through learning to turn off lights when we left a room. There were some no-brainer things (my stereo apparently allows multi-room hookups, and if you have the buttons turned on, it uses several hundred watts to do nothing. I replaced a fileserver + routers with an Apple Time Capsule and saved 100+ watts. We use the dryer differently. And we installed a few BITS smart strips. The reason our savings are high is partly because I live in the Boston area, where our electricity rate is currently $0.19/kWh, I think. Bottom line was that we made a lot of little changes. I have written about most of them in my personal blog, called fivepercent.us if you're interested.

wmf 17y ago

Can someone explain the difference between a digital meter and a smart meter?

tomharrisonjr 17y ago
A digital meter doesn't have a spinning dial, it reads current a different way. It is able to transmit its readings in several forms, bnoth through a display on the front, but mainly they were designed to allow remote meter reading by the power company -- drive by, instead of having to actually look at the dials. A smart meter is a digital meter but that can intercommunicate -- over a network -- either with the rest of the electric grid system, or even with devices inside your house.
- wmf 17y ago
  Regrettably, I am still not enlightened. Isn't remote meter reading a form of communication over a network?
  - gridspy 17y ago
    Normal and digital meters can only be read by physically visiting the property. Sometimes you don't have to physically look at Digital meters because they have a RF signal. Smart meters transmit their power data through the power lines somewhat like ADSL over the phone lines. At the substation, they connect that to a normal network and can read your meter without visiting. In some cases smart meters work through the mobile phone network with GPRS or SMS messages. Even smarter meters can download instructions from the power company to turn off AC or change the cost of your electricity at different times of day. This would replace the current ripple controllers that do similar things with more limitations. Really cool meters have some sort of communications network within the house so the homeowner can purchase smart displays that talk to the meter and use it as a source of interesting information.

aminuit 17y ago

Not in the article, but worth mentioning: Wattvision is a YC Winter 09 company.

thinksketch 17y ago

I'm always glad to see developments in energy monitoring, but every time I see a tool that monitors a home's power meter it just leaves me wanting to see more. It seems that what we really need is a cheap electrical socket monitoring device so that we can get real-time data about each appliance in our house read out to a central web-app. It doesn't seem very useful to know your overall electricity usage - your energy bill tells you that. If we're going to do something about using too much power, we need to understand what the culprits are. I know that there are socket monitors on the market, but why do they all have expensive screens and buttons and stuff? It seems that they should be 10 times cheaper and feed their data straight to a web-app. http://www.thinksketchdesign.com/2009/02/11/design/green-design-design/the-kill-a-watt-killer-energy-monitors-should-be-10-times-cheaper http://www.thinksketchdesign.com/2009/02/11/design/green-des...

mbergins 17y ago
It doesn't seem very useful to know your overall electricity usage - your energy bill tells you that. Your monthly electricity bill does give you a monthly snapshot of your last month's usage, but the primary point of these devices appears to be moment to moment usage stats. The instantaneous data can act as a feedback mechanism that a monthly snapshot makes difficult. Integrating power monitoring at the device level would also be a nice step forward.
gridspy 17y ago
This low cost individual circuit monitoring is where Gridspy is going, although it will take some time (and high production volume) to get the price down that low. http://gridspy.co.nz/ http://gridspy.co.nz/