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Comment by pg | Hacker News Reader

Wattvision tends to cut your power use, because you're probably wasting power in ways you don't know about. When you first install it, your initial reaction is generally "why are we using so much power?" Then you walk around turning things on and off and watching what happens to the graph. You usually discover some surprises in the process, and those change your behavior.

You make what you measure. Watch any number carefully enough and you'll tend to optimize it, and most households have significant room to.

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I can understand the first usage being kind of interesting and enlightening, but I'm not sure if its $200 kind of interesting.

It seems like this would be of more interest for commercial applications.

How about a device that actually directly saves you power?

Well that's what my friend's startup focuses on currently piloted in South Africa. The startup built a device that reliably saves power. You don't need to pay any fee up front for the device, you "pay as you go" on amount of saving made on monthly basis. No catch. Average savings currently are around 10-15%, engineering team is pushing the numbers up as we speak. Business has gotten necessary funding and even the primary energy supplier has come on board to put an initiative together that would implement the solution to all street lights in the country in the near future. South Africa is currently going through energy crisis due to huge demand and lack of supply.

PS. My wife is one of the co-founders. :)

How does it work?

What is the average time to recoup the cost of the meter and start actually saving money?

If you believe the normal claim that you will save 10-30% and your average monthly power bill is > the cost of monitoring it will take you less than 1 year to pay itself off.

So if your bill is $150 a month, this system (or similar) should pay for itself within a year - IF you try to save power using it.

Saving energy doesn't only have to be about money.

I've always thought that light switches & sockets should have meters on them.

http://www.42u.com/images/power-tower-xl-ptxlv016.jpg

Lots of datacenter grade stuff does. It's really convenient.

Oops, I was about to upvote, but I hit the wrong arrow. And there's no undo. Sorry!

Until recently it was very difficult to get the data from the sensors to a useful place. Wireless networks and common always on internet connections have changed that.

What are the chances some sort of clever metering will be built in to new, higher end houses?

Extremely likely. There are good chances that in 30 years most houses are as automated as our off-grid house on Great Barrier Island and come with power monitoring as standard.

http://blog.gridspy.co.nz/2009/08/the-barrier-house.html

We plan to provide the devices today.

Yes, extremely likely. Hey gridspy guys, do you want to see if we can find some common ground between wv and gridspy? :) ping info@wattvision.com

I wouldn't bet on it too soon. When I was involved in the home automation industry back in the mid/late 90's it seemed like that sort of thing was imminent.

Invensys and CutlerHammer both had power-monitoring devices, electric meters and so on (I still have some CH power monitoring sensors on the main power lines at my house with a system that I put together that tracks KwH, heating oil consumption and a few other metrics).

Anyway... I haven't really seen those products move an inch in the last dozen years (other than press releases).

While I do believe that the real-time feedback is helpful, I also more strongly believe that people who really want to cut their power usage will do so by simply turning more things off or using things less. For the most part, a monthly feedback cycle isn't really THAT long. In some cases the month-long feedback loop let's you measure a more cumulative effect in dollars instead of cents.

Installed cost for these home automation solutions quickly tends to exceed $1000 making them impractical as a cost saver. The sensor costs are suddenly dropping as competition heats up.

Hopefully innovative, web enabled solutions from fast moving startups re-invigorate this sector. I'd sure love to.

I also think that automation has been imminent for long enough to be suspect.

But people responding to feedback is not something to just dismiss. Monthly isn't the same as on demand which isn't the same as "out in the open." If sockets changed colour from blue to red as the burned electricity, consumption would go down.

Measuring power at the meter is nice, but I'm wanting to measure the power per circuit in the house. Given how small electronics have gotten, I've been wondering if it's possible to put a simple monitor in a circuit breaker. It would make it easier to narrow down the power hungry devices in the home.

I know it differs from the whole internet-connected/constant monitoring solution, but there is a device that you can use to do this manually called the Kill A Watt: http://www.p3international.com/products/special/P4400/P4400-...

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