The are many options for improving a home’s energy efficiency. You can upgrade appliances, improve heating or cooling effectiveness, or reduce use of the worst energy hogs. Yet it can often be hard to know where to begin. Unless you know where energy is going, it can be hard to make effective changes.

Back in October we wrote about The Energy Detective (TED), a device that measures electrical use on an ongoing basis at the circuit box. TED works very well, but some homes may benefit from a more comprehensive system, which examines not only how much electricity is used, but exactly where it is going.

There are two devices designed to do just that: the FIDO from EcoDog, and Powerhouse Dynamic’s eMonitor.

Both systems install by the circuit box and monitor the power used by each circuit in the house. FIDO sends the data to a household computer over home wiring, connecting to the PC via a USB cable. The eMonitor connects by an Ethernet cable to a home network. The data is sent to Powerhouse Dynamics where it is accessible via web browser or iPhone app.

The different ways of handling the data lead to some differences between the systems. The eMonitor is well suited for remote access; since the information is stored on the web, it can be accessed easily from any computer. The downside is that Powerhouse Dynamics charges a monthly fee, although the system is generally sold with a 2 or 5 year service package. FIDO has no monthly fee, but only runs on a Windows PC. The system can email or text alerts, but does not offer full remote control of usage.

The EcoDog and the eMonitor are expensive, running anywhere from $700 and up installed. The high cost makes systems like these primarily suited for homes with complex electrical usage, such as time-of-use electricity pricing and on-site solar photovoltaic systems. In these cases, monitoring electrical usage may result in substantial savings, but the systems will also provide real time monitoring of solar production to identify problems as soon as they occur.

Related articles

• WholeBuffalo.com: Solar Panels review
• Sniffing out energy hogs: The EcoDog energy monitor (scientificamerican.com)

Tags: Home energy monitoring

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 9th, 2011 at 2:34 pm and is filed under Monitoring. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.