Whole Home Energy Monitor

[buelliganx1]

I work for a large company that does large commercial building controls. We have the capability to control/monitor about any device really. We have our own "energy solutions" division that will evaluate the energy use of a particular site, propose a plan to save energy through operational changes and some equipment improvements, and then guarantee those savings and ROI over several years following project completion. Cool thing is, if those guarantees fall short, the customer gets a check.

 

As part of these projects it's becoming increasingly popular to "sub-meter" individual buildings, tenants, pieces of equipment, etc. over recent years to see what is actually using what. It's pretty common to totalize all the data and output summaries to a person in charge daily/weekly/monthly/whatever. Some customers will actually ask that we display this data live in their lobbies, or near the front desk or something to help people better relate to their personal consumption. I also see more and more cracking down on old ladies with a fan, a space heater, and 3 desk lamps in their cubicle.

 

As for residential, I saw LED bulbs mentioned somewhere above, and I've had great luck with the CREE led bulbs sold through home depot. They come in an incandescent identical "warm white", and a purer white but not blue "daylight" color temperature. So far they are only available up to 60w incandescent standard I think, and 65w incandescent flood. Go get some

 

+1 On the CREE bulbs, they are reasonably priced and produce a light pattern very close to a normal incandescent bulb

[ImUrOBGYN]

They had a really cool system in Texas for low income families or if you just really wanted to monitor the hell outta your energy use. This did pretty much everything yours does but even more relating to your bill, how much in energy and cash your using and have left if you're a pre-payer, etc. It was pretty neat.