Current Cost Energy Monitors and Google Power Meter
A great new service is coming to the UK for small business owners on behalf of Google and a UK supplier of energy monitors, current cost.
Energy monitors have been around for some time now but this announcement means that the monitors developed by current cost now integrate with the Google power meter software which enables you to analyse your electricity usage over a longer period of time.
What is the current cost energy monitor ?
This is a simple device that automatically collects the data from your meter and shows some basic information such as current usage, costs based on your tariff and some averages from the previous days and weeks. It’s a small device that can fit any where around your business premises and provide an instant read out. The data is transmitted from your meter via mobile frequencies and is easy to install.
The new tie up means that the energy monitors supplied by Eon in the UK are compatible with Google power meter software and integration is very straight forward.
What is Google Power Meter Software ?
This is a desktop application that can be run from the internet. All the data is collected automatically and sent to the software so you can start to analyse where your electricity usage is. Most of the benefits may lie for the consumption you make during the night period. In fact one restaurant owner in Australia saw that their over night consumption figures were 100 kwh and went to investigate. What they found was they were not only leaving items that were essential on such as fridges but also their coffee pots. This will save them around £2,500 per year just because they had the data and were able to investigate where the higher than normal consumption figures were.
You can also trend the data so if your bills are increasing you’ll see the exact times and days of the week when this is happening and start to investigate where the higher usage figures are coming from. All of these services are 100% free of charge and just require you to sign up and off you go.
Smart meters versus Energy Monitors
Most businesses are fitted with so called smart meters that send data back to your energy provider mainly every 30 minutes and are sometimes called half hourly meters. This is so that your energy company can automatically collect the data for billing purposes and design a tariff around your needs. You may not be able to see this data so having an energy monitor connected to powerful analytic software means at last you’ll be able to see at a glance what your consumption figures are as well.
The software can also set targets for consumption, send you emails if your energy usage is increasing over target and calculate just how much your next bill might be. This is only the start for developing technologies to put the data and information in the hands of the users and bill payers so not only will you be able to reduce the amount of CO2 your company is using but also save money in the mean time by reducing your energy consumption over time. Current Cost estimates that their customers have already saved close to 400,000 tons of CO2 through monitoring their electricity use.
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