PowerHouse eMonitor lets you manage power use down to the circuit
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted March 8th 2010 3:28PM
posted March 8th 2010 3:28PM
As energy prices increase, so does our desire to understand and actively manage household power use. Joining the fight alongside Google's PowerMeter and NEC's "dung beetle" game, PowerHouse Dynamic's eMonitor interfaces with your circuit box to tell you how much energy each individual circuit is using, and the management software seems particularly robust: users can look forward to real-time stats, customized energy saving recommendations based on your home's energy usage, and a handy read-out of your "carbon footprint" and what it would take to offset it. In addition to all that, alerts can be configured for everything from overloaded circuits to left-on appliances, individual outlets and thermostats can be controlled remotely (optional), and an iPhone app is slated to be released later this year. Packages start at $800. PR, video after the break.
Time to Have Complete Power Over Your Energy Use
Powerhouse Dynamics eMonitor is the world's first comprehensive, affordable, per circuit home energy monitoring and energy management system
03.05.2010 – Do you know how much your refrigerator is costing you? Or that space heater in the home office? Or the entertainment center that seems to produce offspring in the night?
Nobody has, until March, when the PowerHouse Dynamics eMonitor will begin shipping exclusively from Freeport, Maine based EnergyCircle.com. It is the world's first affordable, whole house, circuit by circuit energy monitoring and management system.
What does this mean?
The eMonitor's unique combination of hardware, software, and services let you view your home's 24x7, minute-by-minute electricity use, electricity cost, and carbon footprint, as well as historical information by day, month, or year, all in a personalized and intuitive graphical interface from anywhere you can access the internet. It also provides cost estimates based on current and past usage.
"Circuit by circuit energy monitoring is a significant breakthrough in the category," said Peter Troast, Energy Circle's founder and CEO. "Seeing your energy use by appliance and by room is extraordinarily powerful. This simple act of knowing your usage in real time drives better awareness, engages families and produces real savings."
The cutting-edge feature of the eMonitor is its capability to display electricity use by individual circuit so you can see real-time and historical information on major appliances, entertainment centers, and specific rooms. The service keeps you continuously up to speed on your home's energy usage by providing you with alerts if circuits are overloaded, if there are problems with appliances or your renewable sources, if your electricity usage is unusual, or if your energy bills are approaching a threshold (set by you).
The eMonitor dashboard is viewable on the web from any local or remote location, and provides customized energy saving recommendations based on your home's energy usage.
The single-unit eMonitor configuration comes with enough hardware to monitor 24 circuits (2 mains and 22 addition circuits) and is compatible with both 120v and 240v electrical systems. Most American homes will work with the single unit eMonitor. For homes with more than one panel, or more than 22 circuits, purchase the 2 eMonitor configuration. The 2 eMonitor configuration is $1,498.
eMonitor integrates with renewable energy systems (for solar PV, solar thermal, or wind installations), monitoring energy production, savings, and efficiency, and also reports on any problems with those installations.
The eMonitor is also equipped for future capability to remotely control individual outlets and thermostats, and will integrate with many existing home control systems. Planned future enhancements also include the ability to monitor other energy sources such as natural gas and home heating oil.
After a month in the Energy Circle home, some interesting results:
Energy Circle founders Peter Troast and Lisa Fahay have been using the eMonitor on their own home since early January 2010 and along with the above mentioned features, have had some unexpected benefits:
"Since we began testing eMonitor in our home, we've seen big changes in our families behavior," said Lisa Fahay, Energy Circle's Director of eCommerce. "The kids are actively competing for whose room uses the least energy, we uncovered the fact that the dryer heat settings are broken, and we've found new sources of vampire power that we're knifing in the heart."
"I'm very impressed with and excited about eMonitor," said Troast. "It is an extensible system that will grow over time to include smart outlets and controllable thermostats, displays and other add-on devices. It is an extremely powerful tool."
That thing would be really handy to have, but probably better off as a rental unless they can really get the price knocked down.
I can already smell the sweat coming from the crowded counter of the "green" movement. While I think this is pretty darn cool, I tend to wonder how many people are going to spare 800 bucks to buy it? plus an iPhone app? I know there are a lot of iPhone users out there but when you break down the amount of people who have iPhones that also own their own houses (what lease holder/renter in their right mind is going to spring for this?) it makes me wonder just how well this thing could sell.
I choose you, circuit two!
Wow this is even more trivial than the Ipad keynote...
I'd hit it.
Why?
I have the Brultech Power meter (www.brultech.com) which does the same thing and works great... Highly recommend it.
I'm all for saving energy, but who the hell is going to spend $800 to put this in their house so they can figure out how to save a few bucks on electricity?
Better off to put the money toward energy saving appliances, home insulation, etc.
@edf I manage a small (8,000 sq/ft) office. I already have a TED meter CT attached to my circuit breaker mains, however I have one subpanel that is constantly drawing 3.6 kW, with occasional equipment cycling during the after hours. I've been looking to a somewhat affordable solution to help me better log and report the consumption of those circuits. It'll consume 100kWh, which is about $10 a day.
For my purposes, this device would likely pay for itself in less than a year.
@GeekPI
I believe you, but the key word in my post was "home".
Seems to me that one can identify the big power consumers in a home and take actions with buying a device like that.
This isn't anything new. I have been using Cyber Switching PM-8's that do the same thing for the past 3 years. Price is about the same though.
http://www.cyberswitching.com/
-R
This is an interesting article in The Economist about cutting energy
usage and therefore costs. It discusses PassivEnergy a product to
monitor and smartly reduce power usage.
The article comments are equally interesting, with many saying you are better off "greening" your home to reduce energy use up front instead of after the event. I completely agree with this, but feel there is
room for both.
I'll definitely be looking into power use monitoring in when I build our new house. It is also interesting that both Google and Microsoft have power monitoring software/hardware now.
See:
http://www.economist.com/science-technology/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15585504
http://www.passivsystems.com/default.aspx
The one they should have talked more about is the TED 5000 which was the small silver one. I have been using ted 5000 and at 1/4 the price it does "almost" everything this one does. It will allow you to "tag" appliances for monitoring and let you monitor seperate circuits.
The interface is not as nice, but the cost makes up for it.
Lets see, that thing costs 800 bucks, assuming it helps me save 10% (which would be a lot, we already have high efficiency everything, and watch our usage) it would take roughly 5 years to pay for it's self. I can count about 100 other ways to spend that and actually get back more than just awareness. PS there is this little thing called a bill, it comes 12 times a year, for free!
PS: I have a few Smart Strips, they're awesome. http://bit.ly/bsqzRO
@jfine
I don't even see how it saves you that much on an ongoing basis.
If you have power-hogging devices, all you need to know is what they are using something like Kill-a-Watt. Then use them less.
@Le Big Mac Sorry, were you talking about the smart strips? I use one for my computer, when it sleeps it kills the monitor, speakers, printer, etc, which saves a decent amount. When the computer wakes it turns them back on again. I also use them in my TV room to power down everything (minus DVR) when I turn off my receiver. I haven't run the Kill-a-watt (which is awesome) on the setup yet but I estimate it saves about 100-125w/hr in the TV room and 150-200w/hr in the computer room. Plus I'm lazy so this is nice cause it's a no brainer.
With audio:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xqol1FNxuQs#t=2m06s
lame...what happen to this being a gadget blog?
(Disclosure: I'm CEO of Energy Circle. We sell eMonitor, and virtually all the others too.)
On price: for circuit by circuit monitoring, this is the price at the moment. Yes, there are cheaper solutions, like the TED products that produce a whole house reading, but don't collect or display data by circuit. As to ROI, we started monitoring starting last May, and since have reduced our usage by 29% (with our admittedly astronomic ME electric rates of $.159/kwh, we've saved $490 over that period.) No major actions--just awareness, engaging kids, smart strips, efficient lighting. Decent ROI by our measure, but we confess we're energy geeks.
It's also important to point out that eMonitor is an extensible system, which will accommodate future add ons like controls, smart thermostats, smart plugs, displays and integration with home automation systems. It's really more comparable to systems like Agile Waves which run to $10K or more. In that sense, $800 is reasonable.
There's lots more info on Energy Circle, including my installation video, several posts on our personal usage, and a growing FAQ.
http://ecpro.energycircle.com/shop/emonitor-energy-monitor-powerhouse-dynamics.html
If you like data, and are serious about understanding the electricity use of your home at a granular level, the eMonitor is great. But if you want to run around the house and test each appliance with a $49 kill-a-watt, that can work too. All of the options are a lot better, and more informative, than waiting for the monthly bill.
Thanks Peter. I also noticed in the product info page it says,
"eMonitor integrates with renewable energy systems (for solar PV, solar thermal, or wind installations), monitoring energy production, savings, and efficiency, and also reports on any problems with those installations."
Definitely not something a smart strip, Kill-a-watt or otherwise, could do. Do you know anything about what the iPhone app they're creating for it is going to be used for?