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Abingdon Carbon Cutters is a Community Action Group formed to help reduce the carbon footprint of Abingdon in response to climate change, and to promote a sustainable and resilient lifestyle for our town as fossil fuel stocks decline. We meet on the third Wednesday of each month at St Ethelwold's House, which is here.

At some meetings, we have guest speakers to present various topics, and at others we discuss our own personal actions to address climate change. The group has a focus on encouragement, both of one another, and of the town community.

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Sunday, November 1, 2009

Home energy monitors

There's a review of energy monitors in Ethical Consumer magazine no. 120 for Sept/Oct 2009. There's a range of models on the market, including the OWL. There are different levels of sophistication - some can be connected to a computer for analysis of the data, and some can monitor individual appliances - someone was asking about this at the meeting.

Natural Collection are currently offering the OWL at a reduced price.

Here are the websites and telephone numbers for the various manufacturers:

Owl - www.theowl.com 01256 383430
Eco-eye - www.eco-eye.com 01903 851905
Efergy - www.efergy.com 0845 017 7769
Current Cost - www.currentcost.com 01483 604517
Wattson - www.diykyoto.com 02077 297500

Top of the range is the Wattson, which can monitor individual appliances, has a memory function, can be connected to a computer for recording and analysing data, and can measure home electricity generation as well as consumption. It also works with both single phase and three-phase supplies. It costs around £100.00.

At the other end of the range is the Owl Micro, which simply measures consumption in kw and cost in £. This costs £24.99.

Other models from the above manufacturers cost between £34.95 and £49.99 and have different levels of functionality depending on how much you pay. The Current Cost CC128 Envi can monitor individual appliances and the basic kit costs £39.95, but I think you have to buy additional sensors for each appliance, which obviously increases the cost.

2 comments:

  1. We got an Owl Micro for £15 which included delivery. It was on eBay (but brand new) and it is very very helpful.

    http://shop.ebay.co.uk/i.html?_nkw=owl+micro

    ReplyDelete
  2. There's a product called USB Connect from OWL for connecting the OWL Wireless (not the Micro) to a computer to analyse data, but at the moment it's only available for the PC, not the Mac.

    ReplyDelete

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