Get Greener with Blueline
The cost of energy is on the rise. This isnʻt a fact that anyone likes, but itʻs the way things are, and the way we can expect it to be for the foreseeable future. For as much as we would love to be presenting some wonderful gadget that would make the actual cost of energy go down this isnʻt quite it. However, itʻs very nearly the next best thing. By keeping track of how your householdʻs energy is being used in a detailed way itʻs possible to adjust your own habits to be more energy efficient.
Blue Line Innovations has devised a way to track your energy use with the Power Cost Monitor, and we were eager to try it, because knowing your problem is half the battle. The Power Cost was installed with little to no ado, the unit sensor just gets attached outside to the meter. Note: before going much further, itʻs worth noting that if youʻre in an apartment building where you donʻt have access to your individual unitʻs meter this device wonʻt work for you. We tested ours out on a single-family house.
Once the sensor was hooked up our data was transmitted to the display, which is inside wherever you choose to put it. The information that is on the display told us how much electricity we were using and the cost per watt. We had fun going around and turning lights and appliances on and off to see what it would do at first, and the experts aren’t lying when they say that unplugging electronic devices can save you money. Because various motors in your refrigerator and such cycle at different times, it can be hard to get a fix at first on individual devices, but with some practice and pattern-detection skills, it gets easier. Of course, we would’ve loved a little better interface, but all in all, it worked pretty well. It just would’ve been nice to have some additional feedback- little rewards like a green readout when you’ve reduced power week-over-week.
Our overall usage went down considerably while things like the TV and computers were unplugged as opposed to just being shut off (beware vampire power!) Eventually we quit horsing around, and just let it do itʻs thing. Toward the end of our testing period we found that we were much more cognizant of what was being left on, and more importantly we were wasting a lot less energy. Lights got turned off, radios and TV got turned off. Even aside from the monetary savings we also found a new level of peace and quiet.
Depending how much you alter your energy usage you could potentially save 20% off of your electricity bill, and your awareness of your energy consumption will certainly go up with this device. Itʻs available online from select retailers and will run you around $110.
