A Month with the Other TED

After a few installation and customer service headaches, I’ve had my TED 5000 energy monitoring system  running for the last full month. It’s been an interesting experiment to see how heightened awareness of my home energy consumption might affect my usage habits.

The 5000 generally works as advertised. It constantly plots my energy use. I’m able to access the data from my home computer and iPhone/iPad inside my home network, and from Google PowerMeter through a web browser. The 5000 crashed three times in November, resulting in incomplete data for those days and threw off weekly and monthly totals. Resetting it was as simple as unplugging the gateway for a minute. Although the monthly totals for cost and consumption were off by about 20% compared to my actual electric bill, I’d like to see it running for another month before drawing any conclusions about its accuracy.

I watched everything closely for the first few days, but the novelty of active monitoring wore off quickly. It took less than a week to recognize the rhythm and patterns of our everyday life. There was the quiet, hourly cycling of the refrigerator at night while we’re sleeping, a spike at 6:30am when we woke up, a lull after we left school and work, and lots of activity from 5:00-11:30pm. We saw more pronounced jumps when running the dishwasher or washer/dryer. These patterns were consistent and regular, if not predictable.

While I’m more aware of my use, the 5000 hasn’t done much to change it. We’re still going to watch tv, use the computer, wash clothes and dishes, and run the air conditioner or heater. Consumption awareness builds a mindset of conservation, but conservation alone isn’t enough. My daily electricity cost for November was $2.54. Without a way to directly act on the 5000’s data, it just takes too much work to manage pennies out of that cost.
While I enjoyed the experiment, I’ll wait for management systems that offer more control and look for smarter, energy-saving appliances that passively save me money.

Screenshots from the TED 5000 and Google PowerMeter:

The Footprints Dashboard

Footprints dashboard detail

Daily cost detail

Real-time power graphic with selectable frequencies


Google PowerMeter detail
 

Energized is an ongoing series following my education about living a more sustainable life.

As Vice President of frog’s Design Realization group, Collin works closely with our design and engineering teams to bring innovative ideas to market. With over 20 years of experience in both creative and engineering management, Collin brings focus and multi-disciplinary expertise to this critical phase of the delivery process. In 1996, Collin co-founded frog’s digital media group and has worked extensively with frog clientele in the USA, Europe, and India.