Monitoring

It has been very interesting and a source of some excitement (sad, but true!) these past few days. What is it? An energy monitor!

We don't know where it came from, but it appeared in the post at the weekend, addressed to the FH, which is where the mystery begins. If I had ordered it or even bought it, it would have definitely been addressed to me, not him, so that narrows it down a little - most likely to be something to do with the FH. There are two options left - that the FH put his name down for it amongst other offers at the local flu jab tea and cake afternoon that the surgery organised, which is possible, going on the fact that he came home from that afternoon with an energy saving plug, so there must have been people there from companies or charities to do with helping older people save money and energy. Option 2 is that the EFG put his name down on a freebie website she frequents - samples of strange teabags turn up occasionally, the odd pack of shampoo arrives in the post, that sort of thing. An energy monitor doesn't seem to be in the same league, so I am in favour of option 1.

So, we attached it to the electricity wires in the meter box as instructed, and got it all set up. It hovers around 4p/hour most of the time when we are not doing much, so that is covering the three freezers and two fridges, and the air pump in the sewage treatment plant - all of those are on constantly, although I know that the refrigeration equipment will cycle a bit. When we put the kettle on, it leaps up to about 43p/hour, and the dishwasher and washing machine are each putting it up to about 37p/hour - I haven't had them both on at the same time yet. I haven't dared see what the oven does to it, yet, although that will happen later on today when I do some baking. I have been using the Remoska instead of the oven more often lately anyway, and that hardly used much at all.

So thanks go to whoever sent it as it is educational and motivational as well; it is in the kitchen where we can all see it when we pass, and it is helping us to be more aware of our energy use. There are buttons where we can get it to tell us how much power we have used in the past hour or 12 hours, but I haven't read that section on the leaflet yet - I'll get to that soon...