A few years ago I came to the realisation that if you want people to be more environmentally conscious or economical in terms of utility consumption, (electricity, water, gas, etc), they need far better data than a single figure per month.
You want to be able to see usage to a resolution of at most 5 minutes.
That way people can spot things like “having my electric heater on for those couple of hours used more electricity than all my lights use for a month”.
I have an inverter and solar panels in my place (very common now in South Africa middle class homes due to unreliable electricity producer) and I can see a full history of electricity usage.
It’s easy for me to see where I can improve my efficiency or why my consumption was so high.
It’s still only an overall figure though, so you have to do an informed assumption as to what caused the consumption.
For example it’s obvious that the 3kw draw for about an hour or so after I shower is the geyser heating itself back up. I can see from the usage stats that my battery was depleted from the night, that the solar production is still low due to my showering in the early morning and that the energy was thus coming from the grid (the inverter records all these figures).
It is then obvious that I can very simply save money on electricity by putting a timer on my geyser so that it only heats after 10am or so, once the sun is high enough for solar production to cover the energy usage.
Now I just wish I had something as convenient for monitoring water consumption.
You want to be able to see usage to a resolution of at most 5 minutes.
That way people can spot things like “having my electric heater on for those couple of hours used more electricity than all my lights use for a month”.
I have an inverter and solar panels in my place (very common now in South Africa middle class homes due to unreliable electricity producer) and I can see a full history of electricity usage.
It’s easy for me to see where I can improve my efficiency or why my consumption was so high.
It’s still only an overall figure though, so you have to do an informed assumption as to what caused the consumption.
For example it’s obvious that the 3kw draw for about an hour or so after I shower is the geyser heating itself back up. I can see from the usage stats that my battery was depleted from the night, that the solar production is still low due to my showering in the early morning and that the energy was thus coming from the grid (the inverter records all these figures).
It is then obvious that I can very simply save money on electricity by putting a timer on my geyser so that it only heats after 10am or so, once the sun is high enough for solar production to cover the energy usage.
Now I just wish I had something as convenient for monitoring water consumption.