There’s mint.com and other sites out there to help you get as much data as possible on your finances to help you save money. Now there’s a device that was just release by Microsoft Hohm that allows home owners to see how much energy they’re consuming in near-time (every 15 seconds). By enabling devise like the Blue Line Power Cost Monitor to connect to Hohm you will receive more detailed energy use information that you are currently getting on your monthly electric bill.
We all know that more information allows us to change our behaviors, if you can’t measure it you can’t improve it. And with Hohm’s east-to-use graphs, you can easily find out how to save the most energy and money. Check out the impact of hot weather and an air conditioning working overtime had on energy use in the graph below.
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When looking at your actions throughout the day, the graph really comes to life: Allowing home owners to see how their actions change their energy consumption.
- At about 9:00 a.m., the air conditioning was turned on and ran briefly.
- At about 11:00 a.m., the air conditioning was turned off.
- At about 1:00 p.m., the air conditioning was turned on again briefly, and then turned on for the rest of the day at about 3:00 p.m.
- At about 11:00 p.m., the air conditioning was turned off and dishwasher completed its cycle.
Hohm captured all this information in real time from the Blue Line monitor and made it easy to see and understand; and in the graph below you can see the corresponding impact this had on energy cost for the day (please note that to calculate energy cost we estimate energy costs regionally based on data we collect ).
Here’s a quick video I did setting up the the PCM wifi device that connects the Power Cost Monitor to your Microsoft Hohm account.
As you can see it’s really simple to set up the device in your home. I also shot another video with Joel Telling who went through the process himself as well. He had some interesting findings after he set up his PCM WiFi device to his house.
Overall for around $250 you can easily install and monitor your home energy consumption allowing you to save more energy and money. If you have any additional question on how to install the device or some of my additional findings using Hohm just let me know.
Elliott