Price: $200 and up.
The Energy Detective, TED 5000, was certainly a ground-breaking electricity monitor -- the first commercially available device that was designed to be part of your home network. It provides all of the functions of an instant reading meter, but also has a modest ability to store your historical data right in one of its components, called the gateway. The software for looking at and learning about your usage is an included part of the product, and is available on any computer on your home network -- it is presented as a web page right from within any browser so works on any computer, even other web-enabled devices like iPhones. You can buy a display for your kitchen to keep tabs on your instant usage, like the others (and it's a pretty nice display, if a bit cheaply made). TED is very accurate (within 2 Watts) and is able to take readings as quickly as every second or two, and also displays in Watts (not kilowatts, like others). When you want to know what an appliance or fixture uses, TED provides the real-time feedback, as well as some recent history that can help isolate the energy wasters in your house.
The TED 5000 also is able to connect directly to Google PowerMeter and send your data along with your permission. Furthermore, a computer program can request data from the TED and do other interesting and useful stuff with it -- there are iPhone apps and browser plugins that tap the most obvious uses of this capability, but we know about a few other services being built that would be able to collect and analyze data from devices like TED 5000 and provide interesting and useful information that you might be able to use to help reduce or optimize how you use your electricity.
Unfortunately, the TED 5000 is a complicated device -- needlessly complicated in our opinion. Getting it set up requires installing current sensors in your electrical box like the Envi, Owl, Cent-a-meter and previous TED 1000 version. And like the previous version, the TED 5000 stayed with sending its data to the core part, the "gateway" using your homes power lines -- this has made many users frustrated, since the TED 5000 is susceptible to power line noise and this can make it stop working at random times, and can require a lot of jumping through hoops to get it working in some cases. The gateway is the next part, and plugs in (theoretically anywhere, but it has to be a circuit without power line noise). The gateway connects the TED to your home network with an Ethernet cable (also an odd choice, in our view, as wireless would have been nice).
Once you get it all configured and working, the TED is a pretty cool device, but after selling it in our store since it was available, we have had so many returns, so many frustrated users, and a significant number of quality control issues that we simply cannot recommend it any more to anyone not willing to potentially put up with a lot of grief getting it working. Don't get us wrong, when TED works, it's great: it's just hard to get it to that point.
The combination of instantaneous readings of power consumption, along with the historical data stored in the TED, and also sent to Google PowerMeter puts TED in a league of it's own, in some ways. We wish it were simpler, but for what it does, it's pretty cool.
Comments
The simple fix that finally worked for me was walking around to different outlets for the gateway inside the house and plugging it in to make sure that the side light blinked green, when it blinks green you have found and outlet that has low noise and the unit works. Before I did that the TED was fairly glitchy.
Posted by David Glover on Oct 13, 2010 9:44pmDavid --
This fix for line noise worked for many people, and some had no problems at all. To avoid the power line carrier (PLC) noise issue, some went the length of installing a separate outlet near their breaker panel into which they would installed their TED gateway. Mostly, once the TED is installed it performs its core functionality well. I have a TED 5000 (and a bunch of others) and it's my personal favorite, except when it breaks.
The other issue we encountered over, and over, and over was poor construction quality. It seems like many or even most of the display units had issues with battery life. Normally, they are plugged in to their base, but if you take it out, you are supposed to be able to walk around with the display. Search for "display problem" or "battery" on the TED support forum and you'll find many people having this problem.
Now, after the TED has been available for about a year, we're also seeing durability issues. My TED randomly stopped working on August 5th - I needed to unscrew the top and re-seat the daughterboard (and then go through a bunch of reconfiguration) to get it working again. A couple weeks afterward, the display stopped working -- after wiggling it a few times in the base (and going through a bunch of steps to get it reconfigured) it started working again. More recently, the display stopped working yet again, and this time it "forgot" it's serial number and remembered a new one ("F00F002", which is a little programmer joke) which I had to enter to get it working again. Now it's updating intermittently. Needless to say, the display I have needs replacement.
This is all a terrible shame, because the TED was the leader by a long shot -- a whole year before any of the other monitors provided the means to reliably record data on the web, but now, there are multiple others that do many of the same things as TED, but more simply and for about the same cost (or less). I have been testing the BlueLine WiFi adapter which connects to Microsoft Hohm and it's working just fine. I have tested a beta version of Wattvision since February, and it worked and installed in minutes. It's hard to recommend TED over these far simpler alternatives, these days.
There are cases where the TED does stuff others don't, specifically solar PV. But in this case, I would recommend that customers buy an eMonitor, which doesn't just "support" solar, but does a really exceptional job. The incremental cost is relatively small (compared to the cost of a solar array) and the level of detail from eMonitor is much more useful and better. The BrulTech ECM-1240 may have a multi-circuit solution that costs less than TED. (Ironically, neither eMonitor nor BrulTech offer a display option, so TED would have won on that point ... if the display was reliable).
We want to love TED. But it's a hard product to live with.
Tom
Posted by Tom Harrison on Oct 14, 2010 7:43amTom,
I think the display units are almost always unnecessary. Anyone who is getting a TED 5000 has internet and wifi. A laptop, smart phone or even a desktop is a better substitue for the TED handheld display units. Luckily mine had an immediate battery problem when it arrived and I was able to return and get a refund. Without the display unit hassle I think more people would have a better TED experience.
Once you see the big number - you start work on ALL the small stuff which really adds up. I appreciate how dedicated everyone is at The Energy Circle, keep up the great work. Thanks
Posted by David Glover on Oct 14, 2010 7:59amDavid -- with the greatest respect, I disagree regarding the value of a display.
I am a total geek and spend my day in front of a computer. Yet I have to "go" to somewhere to see my current energy usage. I have the Ted-o-Meter for my iPhone. We should be able to get at this data easily through the computer. But we don't.
With the units having displays, not just I, but my whole family can glance at the display in the same way we would a clock or a thermometer -- in an instant we can know one important bit of information: current usage.
To be sure, it's not everything, and this is why we were so thrilled with TED (and especially it and other monitors supporting Google PowerMeter, and now MS Hohm) -- these long-term views give you an equally important picture of what's going on.
Here's a recent example of how it has worked for me. At night, as I head up the stairs, I check my TED display (whose backlight also provides a nice hallway nightlight :-) -- I know it should be under 200W ... unless the fridge is running in which case it tends to be 350W or so. If it's higher, I check for lights left on, computers not sleeping or off, etc. As I have recounted here frequently, my kids turn on the electric heat in the basement in the winter, and invariably forget to turn it off. I have saved 8 hours or so of needless heating a few times a month for the last few winters just having that instant data.
But back to the fridge -- I have been noticing that it seems to be on more than I recall. And that's something I can confirm or deny in the time-series data I have in Google PowerMeter, from my TED, and now from MS Hohm via the BlueLine WiFi adapter I am testing. Even more detailed data is available from eMonitor.
So yesterday morning I cleaned the coils, which I now think I should be doing more than a couple of times a year. But I am still collecting data, but think that this simple exercise will significantly reduce how frequently the fridge needs to cycle on to stay cold.
The combination of a display and the time series data are what really make energy monitoring work, at least for me and my family.
Posted by Tom Harrison on Oct 14, 2010 8:28amI understand and agree with your situation. Just 2 people in my house and we both have laptops with the Footprints running in a tab on the browser. I look at it just as much as you do probably, we just interact with it differently. My iphone and laptop always have the information and they always work, which is better than a glitchy display that had problems.
Posted by David Glover on Oct 14, 2010 8:34amNo argument there!
Thanks for your great observations and comments, David.
Posted by Tom Harrison on Oct 14, 2010 10:20amI have experienced most of the problems expressed above. As an engineer this is furstrating as I try to fix the problems and not just throw the thing away and thus spend many hours getting frustrated because when it works it is a real useful device. Probably better to spend my time looking for a better device but so far nothing looks better.
Posted by Peter Van Laanen on Nov 30, 2010 3:54amPeter -- you may find it worth your while to call support at The Energy Detective (theenergydetective.com) and see if they can exchange your unit with a new one.
We're also happy to be able to recommend both BlueLine which now has WiFi support, and Wattvision -- these products both now provide most of the same benefits as TED 5000, but without all the hassles and issues people have reported with TED 5000.
Tom
Posted by Tom Harrison on Nov 30, 2010 8:25amThe only reason I really want a power monitor is so i can track the reliability of my power companies "smart" meter that so many customers have experienced errors with, including myself. So what good is a monitor that simply mimics the same readings as the meter?
Posted by Anonymous on Jan 4, 2011 6:02amWe believe that seeing your energy consumption in real time results in changes in behavior--namely most customers use less electricity.
Posted by Lisa on Jan 4, 2011 10:23am