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A New Energy Management Device - Will It Help You Save Money?

by Jamie Dull
(Portland, OR)

Energy Management - a way to save money: While many sectors of our economy remain depressed, green technology products and services are not only holding their own, they are thriving. The allure of saving money, and the greater collective desire to be environmentally responsible, have convinced consumers that spending money to save money can be a wise decision.

Enter TED (The Energy Detective) a low cost, highly accurate way to monitor your energy usage at home.

With TED you see your energy usage in real time, not at the end of the month when the Electric Utility sends you your bill! The reason this is important, is that if you see the meter ticking with kilowatt hours and dollars used on a continuous basis, you are more likely to save energy. In fact, the makers of TED claim a 10% – 20% savings is doable for homeowners who take advantage of the information TED supplies. TED has also just partnered with Google PowerMeter to allow you to remotely monitor energy usage.

Going Green on electricity in the home is a 3 step progression. The first step in Energy Conservation. The TED fits in this category. It is a highly useful tool to help homeowners become aware of how much they are using and spending on electricity. For most consumers, this is thousands of dollars a year! Worth paying attention to. Until now, only the Utility Companies had the technology to monitor your usage.

The second step is Energy Management. Monitoring your electrical usage is a great first step, but combining it with a system that can automatically manage your usage is where this technology becomes really powerful! If you are like me, you would probably benefit from seeing the TED usage everyday, but human nature and the distractions of everyday life would probably prevent me from realizing the full benefit. However, combine the TED with a Control 4 home automation system and the house manages itself. How does it do this you might ask?

Lighting control is a great place to start. Lights are fairly simple devices, they are either ON or OFF. Take my Kitchen for example. I have 7 can lights in the ceiling. If I turn them on, my Kitchen is bright; I mean… perform surgery on the island bright. It is rare that I really need that much light. By dimming the load to say 70% of its full brightness, I am saving energy and increasing bulb life. I can tell you from experience, as a homeowner with a lighting control system, that I almost never have any light in my house turned on to 100% brightness. Dimming when you turn on lights helps save. Another way is to schedule lights. I have my front porch light set to automatically go on at sunset and then dim to 40% brightness at 10:00pm. It goes off at sunrise.

OK, what next? How about your thermostat? Add a Control 4 thermostat and you can schedule temperature settings to save money.

The energy utilities, if they haven’t already, soon will implement different power rates for different times of day. Armed with this knowledge your house can be programmed to use less energy when rates are higher. Just setting back your thermostat a few degrees can start to add up. Of course, if you had to remember to do this, it would never get done. Once you get the hang of this energy saving stuff, it’s kinda fun. What else can we do? Control 4 makes wireless outlet switches and dimmers that allow you to schedule appliances to turn on and off. This is known by the technical term …OK ready… Load Shedding, ooohh. I can just hear the conversation at the water cooler at work. “Hey, what kind of load shedding are you doing at home?” Load shedding is simply turning off circuits that don’t need to be on. We all have numerous portable devices that must be recharged. I usually plug mine in and leave them there until I need them. Everything from cell phones, ipods, walkie talkies to my electric razor. The problem is, even after they are fully charged, they are still consuming electricity. Try plugging them into a Control 4 wireless outlet switch and have them programmed to charge for 1 hour each day. This is more than enough to keep them ready to go at a moment’s notice.

The final phase in the green progression is Power Creation. Solar panels and wind turbines are coming of age. Government tax credits are substantial and make this category worth exploring. It is now possible to produce a sizable portion of your home’s electricity needs with these technologies. And if you are able to produce a surplus, you can even sell it to the power company. I like the sound of that, them sending me checks!

To learn more, visit these resources:

TED official website

Control 4 Website

Google PowerMeter

Article date: October 27, 2009

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Article submitted by Jamie Dull from www.customcableworx.com, the place where you can build your own custom length audio and video cables.

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