Technology – Power Monitors Con’t
One technology we’re excited to install in the house is a power monitor. We are considering a device from Power Watch – a design and manufacturer out of Oakville Ontario next door to Burlington where we are. Power Watch makes a clever little unit with big results. With a simple power clamp, it hooks into your electrical panel without need for disrupting wiring or any cutting – it reads current through the wiring insulation. After a couple minute install the unit begins to read energy load on all wires coming from the panel and is fed into an IP Based software program on a PC – wirelessly. Slick.
This is where it all starts as you can begin to see what the house is using and log it 24/7. After bench marking the average consumption of the home for a number of days, you can then begin to see what affects consumption, peak activities, appliances, lighting use behavior all are events that can be monitored. Once you are aware of benchmarks you can set goals for lowering consumption and adjusting mindsets on usage – perhaps you’ll see that the savings of a house warmed to only 19º is attractive compared to 22º — you’ll be able to calculate the savings in real time.
John Schroeter of Power Watch tells me that this technology is so compelling that some municipalities are making it a standard in new construction both commercially and residentially. Apparently some regions are installing this type of equipment as part of the service which they control and monitor because they understand that the more we are aware of energy use, the better we will become at reducing our dependency on and waste of cheap energy.
Contact John Schroeter
905.338.2900 ext. 11
www.powerwatch.com