Sarah got me one of these gadgets for Christmas and it's been a real boon. It is a clamp meter that monitors your current draw in your house's 100A feed from the street and wirelessly sends it to a monitor that lives in the kitchen. It keeps tracks of rolling averages and the best display is the one that shows instant power draw as well as a previous week's average daily consumption (in kW-hours).
Now then, at Christmas we were averaging just short of twenty kWh per day and I started on a mission to reduce this;- Cut the number of computers! The kitchen Mac and the Windows machine that runs MediaPortal went and a single machine (with dual DVI o/p's and dual soundcards) replaced them - it also has much better power management.
- 'phone chargers on a timeswitch. Those wall-warts are around 50% efficient (put your hand on one even when it's not charging a 'phone).
- All incandescent bulbs replaced with compact florescents.
- Intelligent mains switch - this gadget powers off the TV, XBox, Wii etc when you sleep the TV. I might get a couple more for other parts of the house.
So, I've managed to reduce my consumption from 19.8kWh to 16.9kWh (as of yesterday) - that's around a tenner a month.
My next step is to replace the 50w halogens in the bathroom and kitchen with 4w LED bulbs.
My next step is to replace the 50w halogens in the bathroom and kitchen with 4w LED bulbs.
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