Back in October, I ordered one of the new TED 5000 energy monitors directly from Energy, Inc. in Charleston, SC. It finally arrived this week (it was backordered), and I took advantage of the warm weather in Parker today to get it installed. This unit uses two inductive pickups to measure real-time power usage for your entire house. It stores historical data, and allows you to export it to your computer or to Google PowerMeter. The idea is that if you are aware of your power usage, you will probably use less power. As Rico Mariani says, “If you are not measuring, you are not engineering.”
This shows what has to be done as far as wiring.
This is the browser based dashboard, showing me using 431 watts for the entire house.
It also comes with a small, handheld LCD display unit (that has rechargeable batteries), so you can see your usage while you are anywhere in the house. That comes in handy if you want to turn something on, and then see how much your electric usage changes. So far, I am very happy with it.
