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Microsoft Hohm and a whole-house power monitor

@ 2010/09/07

But beneath the tone, Hohm is a serious and interesting service. On its own, it looks a lot like other sites offering energy efficiency tips, but its real power comes from its ability to tap into your actual home energy use. The "smart grid" might not be a reality for most of us yet, but a clever combination of sensors, WiFi, and Web data provides unique feedback on your energy use. We tested the Hohm service with one of these devices, the ingenious PowerCost Monitor from Canada's Blue Line Innovations, to find out just how much you can learn from watching your home's energy use in real-time—and if that knowledge is worth the cost.

Comment from jmke @ 2010/09/07

Quote:

The basic sensor and display unit sell for around $100 (an earlier Black & Decker-branded variant can be had for around $65). If you want to connect the device to Hohm and to see usage trends, the WiFi gateway adds another $150.

I can recommend Flukso for .BE visitors
http://www.flukso.net/installation
€94 for single phase and €138 for triple phase households;
installation is painless, setup is easy, result is pretty good

you can make out from the chart below when I went to bed, when I woke up, when I left for work :

the small spikes during the night are most likely the frigo doing his thing; the 350W baseline is wifi router, cable modem, adsl wifi, frigo and file server; I swapped the PSU on the fileserver two months ago, and I could see that the more efficient PSU spared out 50W; before baseline was 400W, now 350W... still a lot; on to do list is building new file server with lower power spec

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