The EnergyCircle house Tweets its live-feed of electricity usage. It's not alone. Under a thatched roof on the Isle of Wight, another house Tweets...
In light of Microsoft's announcement of Hohm and fresh attention being paid to home energy monitoring, we thought it would be worthwhile to bring the matter of energy use back to its home-grown roots. As you know, EnergyCircle has been monitoring its electricity use in real-time on the site, and the results have been telling. The house now uses roughly 16% less electricity than it did before we went live. Annotating the Twitter stream, which at first seemed like it was going to be tricky or burdensome, has proved surprisingly easy for the agile-witted Lisa, and we have a host of followers interested in learning about our spikes, and commenting on our baseload.
Recently, we learned that another house - different indeed from the Energy Circle house - has been quietly, and automatically, Twittering not only its energy usage, but also the goings on of windows, doors and mouse-traps. To follow Andy House, ask permission on Twitter. And for a thoroughly British take on the experience, watch this video. (No, we don't think we are in the least bit bizarre), and we also don't think that mouse is real. (But the dog is).
We do think that monitoring energy use is about to break out, and when it does, we will have a wide variety of ways to think about how to be more efficient. Does your house have a pulse? Ours does.
Comments
Thank you for turning this up. There's more detail at Andy Stanford-Clark's web site (http://stanford-clark.com/).
Under "The Next Generation of home power monitoring" (http://stanford-clark.com/power), Stanford-Clark describes how he uses the $82 CurrentCost128 meter (the British equivalent of The Energy Detective -- but a lot cheaper and available through eBay) to monitor his house's energy usage. He has used the 10(!) channel capacity of the CC128 to monitor not only his overall house power usage but also that of individual appliances -- lights, boiler, shower and even his towelrail. And he's been doing this for more than 4 years! He certainly points the way for the rest of us.
You can see his power usage in real time at:
http://realtime.ngi.ibm.com/powermeter/
and daily water usage at:
Posted by David Fay on Jun 27, 2009 4:43amhttp://realtime.ngi.ibm.com/watermeter/
Thanks David. Agree that what Andy is doing is a great example and case study for the power of real time monitoring.
It's important to point out that the CurrentCost monitor is a UK only product at the moment. They have not indicated any specific timeframe for a US/Canada version. We continue to comb the market for any and all monitors that have a range of features and price points.
Note also that our TED the Energy Detective price was substantially lowered this week. It's now available in the Energy Circle Store for $119.95.
Posted by Peter Troast on Jun 27, 2009 5:58am