PowerCost Monitor TM
by Blue Line Innovations
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Our Price: $119.99 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $49.95 (click here) Category: CE See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
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for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of PowerCost Monitor TM
Customer Review: Promising design but falls short on implementation
Summary: 1 Stars
I got one of these units for Christmas and hooked it up and used it for a couple of months. The unit is excellent for evaluating the cumulative and individual usage of devices around the home as well as trending and seeing the impact of various energy saving techniques such as replacing incandescent with CFLs, validating when someone has left a room without turning off the lights, turning off your computers at night and so on.
The base station takes 15-30 seconds to update a change in electrical consumption. This may be due to my use on my mechanical electrical box with the rotating metal wheel. Because in my install it counts the rotations of the wheel in the meter, it must monitor an entire rotation to note a change in speed, and thus the change in electrical consumption. This might be quicker on the newer electronic meters.
The unit does not automatically reset statistics at the start of a new month, which means you must do it manually if you want accurate month long statistics by staying up until Midnight on the last day of the month. If you do not do the resets the unit will continue accumulating statistics indefinitely, which makes it difficult to correlate the unit's information to your electrical bills.
As others have noted, the communication to the unit is heavily dictated by the use of other wireless devices in your home. I have two other outdoor temprature sensors that run on the same frequency and this would produce situations where the unit would occasionally drop connection to the outdoor sensor. The only way to work around it is to move the base station closer to the outdoor sensor or move the the other wireless devices away from the area.
The other drawback about losing the connection to the outside unit is that the statistics stop accumulating, so if the sensor falls out of range overnight, its possible to lose hours of data and the month's statistics are essentially useless as they will be incomplete.
This means that at best the unit is helpful in point in time assessments of energy consumption and has limited usefulness in trending usage over periods longer than say a week or more.
The outdoor sensor has a very light silicon seal around the battery door designed to keep moisture out of the unit. The problem is the wire for the eye that monitors the rotation wheel passes through a rubber part that is at the top of the compartment at the location where the silicon gasket rests against the housing. The net result of this design is that it provides a location for water to enter the battery compartment which also contains an electric circuit board, and since the seams are all at the top it's a natural location for water to pool and gravity to assist it in penetrating the compartment over time. This is exactly what happened to my unit, and within 2 months the silicon portal for the communication LED showed signs of water in the compartment. After having an increasing inability to maintain communication to the base station, I pulled the batteries and let the unit dry out on a warm dry day. I put new batteries in the unit and then closed it back up, but the electronics were apparently damaged by the moisture.
Blue Line Innovations, the maker of the device has a support number that you can call, but the RMA process is different from any other company I have worked with. Apparently the support personnel cannot provide you with RMA information, nor can they directly transfer you to a live person to talk to about getting replacement sensors or getting repairs done, it's a callback model only.
I have been waiting for a callback for over 2 weeks now and I have made calls into the support center on 3 different occasions to try and move the return/replacement process forward and each time I am told that all they can do is forward the information to corporate and that I will just have to wait for the phone call back.
So, the net result is unless you can get this unit on a steep discount from your energy provider it's not worth the retail value, also, if you live in a moist climate you might want to look at adding some additional shielding or silicon the door seals closed from the outside to prevent moisture from prematurely ending the life of the outdoor sensor.
9/9/10 Update: After Tropical Storm Hermine rolled through town, the unit has once again succombed to water penetration into the battery/circuit board compartment. I am officially done with this device and will be replacing it with a T.E.D - [...]
Customer Review: Worked for a few weeks then..
Summary: 2 Stars
the unit began to drop communications.
The unit lived up the positive reviews and worked flawlessly for two weeks but after a week of high humidity in the Dallas area the unit began to work erratically. I did everything changed batteries, and finally brought the unit inside until the weather improved.
The unis was never directly rained on our meter is under the gable just the ambient humidity affected the unit in some way.
I finally was able to get the unit back online but the following day the same happened.
I spent a lot of time with the Level II tech at Blueline. I have no weather stations, no interference of any kind (the unit worked perfectly for two weeks).
I emailed photos of my meter and the meter box to Blueline this went on for a week back and forth with emails from the tech asking for more information I finally decided to get a refund on the unit.
If you do use one of these devices you are hooked it sheds new light as to really how much energy a common house uses.
It does take anywhere from 20-30 seconds to respond to changes in energy use as some have mentioned.
I was having withdrawal symptoms while the unit was down.
I ended up going with TED (The energy Detective 1000 series) this is a simple unit to install and is rock solid in operation with a feature rich information set with a very nice display! The unit displays usage in real time updates are updated within one to two seconds.
I am one happy camper save the batteries go with TED.
Customer Review: Works ok, but beware
Summary: 2 Stars
This was not as good as I was hoping. First, there are several types of meter sizes, and I guess the size of my meter was not supported. I was told by the company that my meter size is only 5% of the population. I was able to work around it by doubling the rate per KWH, but it did not give me a true reading of the electricity that I used.
I also had an issue with the power company. The first time they came, they took it off the meter thinking it was a device to manipulate the meter. After battling for several weeks to get it returned, I just gave up because I did not think the device was all that useful.
Even when It was working, it didn't tell me much. It did not seem very sensitive on the low end of the scale. I tried unplugging all my electronics, but no mater what I did, I could not get the meter to budge any lower than 11 cents an hour. I even tried to unplug pretty much everything except my fridge. The only time I ever saw a change was when I ran something like the microwave or the oven. Even with 3 TVs on, the meter would not change.
It was nice to see how much different appliance can cost, but about 30 minutes of work with a calculator and your appliance owners' manuals can do the same thing. I just don't think it was worth the price, and I would consider myself a gadget person!
Customer Review: Not very useful
Summary: 2 Stars
My electric company was offering a deal on this product, so I was able to pick one up for only $30. Unfortunately, it wasn't nearly as useful as I had hoped. It attaches to the electric meter, so it only displays the current electric consumption for your entire house. I had expected that I'd be able to go around the house and turn devices on and off and to test how much power they were consuming, but the monitor is slow to detect changes in consumption (5-10 seconds), and the resolution is only to the tenth of the kilowatt, making it nearly useless for comparing similar appliances.
Attaching to the electric meter (digital meter, optical port on the top) was a time consuming and finicky process. Every few days it stopped reading the meter and had to be laboriously loosened and repositioned. Eventually, I was unable to get it to read the meter at all, making the whole thing useless.
In summary, it is an interesting curiosity, but I didn't find it very useful for actually saving electricity. It will tell you how much power you are consuming in your entire house, but it won't help you identify which appliances are actually causing the problem. Not worth the money, especially at full retail.
Customer Review: Works For Me
Summary: 4 Stars
Our house has been running a higher power bill than we expect, so I tried this & a basic 110 volt plug in monitor as well.
I had the installation completed on our electro-mechanical meter in about 20 minutes, and left the monitor in the kitchen where our family could all get feedback on usage. It showed substantial fluctuations during the day- from 1KW to about 12KW. To isolate the energy hogs, I shut down all breakers & measured 1 suspect at a time. This worked well for pool pumps (less usage than expected but still $100/mo unless we use timers to cut back). HVACs were harder to gauge- you can measure what they draw while on, but can't practically isolate them long enough to peg actual usage with the frequent cycling on & off.
The plug-in model was easier to use on small 110 volt items. I found some used negligible power (fountain pump, small transformers for cordless phones, etc.). Others were significant (dehumidifiers in crawl space).
Between the 2 monitors we have probably identified specific & practical changes that can cut $100/ mo from our bill- not bad for $150 + a few hours invested.