Electric Power Management Gadget
Monitor your Electric Power Remotely
Electric Power Management Gadget
An electric power management gadget is ideal if you want to become more informed on your homes power usage and trends. Electricity usage is frequently somewhat of a mystery but this device makes it more open and clear to the average power user.
Yello is one of Germany’s 10 largest energy companies. They worked with IDEO (An ergonomic design firm) to develop an easy to understand electricity meter that makes personal energy consumption more tangible to users.
Meter data is sent to Yellow via Internet and can be accessed by customers with a piece of software that displays among other things the total energy usage in watts, kilowatt hours, or even Euros (the European currency). Customers can then make energy and money saving choices for both short and long term energy usage. Being able to see visually how much energy is being used by home appliances (from washing machines to driers to refrigerators to stoves) is a very useful feature if you ask me.
My question is once again, how come this type of product is not mainstream yet across multiple USA power companies? Well maybe it is more mainstream than I know about right now. But my power company here National Grid does not have such a feature or product. But I would love a energy measuring system such as this! Over time substantial cost savings could be realized if people just understood in visual form how much juice their household is actually using on an item by item basis.
But maybe power companies have a vested interest in not providing too much information about how much energy they are using? They stand to make more profit the more electricity you use. All of this may change when power companies start offering internet service through the power outlets in your house. Maybe then it will allow them to offer more complete service packages along with high speed internet?
Advantages of the Yello Power Management Device:
- No more being in the dark on your homes power usage
- Find out what is using the most power and what trends in power usage are occurring over time.
- Monitor your power usage via the internet remotely
Disadvantages of the Yello Power Management Device:
- Too technically cumbersome for most users
- Requires internet connection
Electric power management is worth keeping an eye on with energy costs going higher and higher. Worth consideration for people who want to know every detail of their power usage.