Tomorrow morning, ALDI is selling a power meter to measure your electricity consumption and greenhouse gas emissions for $12.99. We haven’t tested it, but at that price it’s a low-risk way of getting a better handle on your power usage. [ALDI]
Tomorrow morning, ALDI is selling a power meter to measure your electricity consumption and greenhouse gas emissions for $12.99. We haven’t tested it, but at that price it’s a low-risk way of getting a better handle on your power usage. [ALDI]
Tim
Friday, February 3, 2012 at 8:13 PMI dunno if i can trust it, i’d rather spend the extra $23 and get
http://steplight.com.au/education/monitor-energy/plug-in-electricity-power-meter/
so that i can be sure im seeing the right data.
Boris
Friday, February 3, 2012 at 9:56 PMHow do you know it’s accurate? Just from their website?
Cameron
Saturday, February 4, 2012 at 9:39 AMLooks the same to me. Why would I trust this one over the ALDI one?
Nicholas
Friday, February 3, 2012 at 11:01 PMPlanning to get one, should be good to muck around with.
Shane
Friday, February 3, 2012 at 11:10 PMYeah Sure $12.99 times however many power points you want to monitor.
Ryan
Saturday, February 4, 2012 at 2:02 AMWell it would be useful for someone who would like to monitor there computer + peripherals or entertainment system or anything that people use powerboards for.
Brad
Saturday, February 4, 2012 at 7:57 AMTrick is to plug it into one power point, turn everything on and measure the usage then move to the next power point and so on….
Nate
Saturday, February 4, 2012 at 2:12 AMI could just save $29 or $12.99 and TURN EVERYTHING OFF WHEN YOU’RE NOT USING IT. Feel free to send me your cheques.
Ron
Saturday, February 4, 2012 at 8:46 AMThe only thing I understand is that such a gadget tells you how much power a gadget plugged in without being turned on is pulling down… But Nate’s advise is right on….
tas
Saturday, February 4, 2012 at 11:48 AMHard to argue with the price, but be aware that most of these meters are inaccurate for standby loads (e.g.15 watts from an old amp may display as 3 watts). Choice mag tested a whole batch a while back and only a couple came back as genuinely accurate for low loads.
Andrew
Saturday, February 4, 2012 at 12:14 PMI purchased one a couple of months ago from Aldi and I can tell you how it works.
It’s designed so that you measure the power usage over a period of time (at least a week) but you can leave it plugged in for months.
When you set it up you look at your electricity bill and enter the cost of your electricity and then plug the meter into a device. Leave it for a week or longer and then you view your results on a graph and see how much it has cost you over the week.
Of course it will also show you the amount of watts, amps, volts the device is drawing at that moment.
I plugged it into a laptop for a few weeks looked at the results, reset the device and now it’s plugged into our Plasma TV. When I’m bothered I’ll see how much the TV costs to run over 3 weeks.
It’s a bit tricky to set up because there are only 4 buttons on the device but I think its great value for money.
JonBOY
Saturday, February 4, 2012 at 4:06 PMmeh. I’d like to be able to monitor usage of my Whole house, but I’m not interested in metering a single power point.
Graeme
Saturday, February 4, 2012 at 5:58 PMTry one of these then – http://steplight.com.au/education/monitor-energy/wireless-real-time-home-electricity-display/
Morf
Sunday, February 5, 2012 at 5:18 PMOne option recommended by industry in Aus is http://power-mate.com.au/
qfiffle
Sunday, February 5, 2012 at 10:36 PMYou can actually borrow these from some public libraries. All the libraries in Canberra have them, together with other handy things like a laser thermometer, so you can check heat loss through windows etc too.