I spotted an advert in a costa del sol paper the other day which showed me a picture of a wireless device that you attach to your power mains and it shows you in real time how much electricity you are using.

With the way things are at the moment, I thought it would be neat to be able to watch my electric spend, I mean the “leccy” is one of those bills where you just have no clue what the bills are going to be right?

So, I ordered mine off Ebay for €35.00 and it arrived today, and I proudly show you my install which took me all of 20 minutes.

WARNING. If you are unsure of doing this kind of thing yourself, just get an electrician in to install it for you.

This is my mains box inside our apartment and you need to attach the sensor to the BLUE wire. In the UK I think its RED (as per the instructions I received). Make sure the sensor is clipped and works properly with the transmitter before closing up the panels.

I have now put the panels in place only after routing the white plug cable which plugs into the transmitter. It has to be nice and neat because the wife will start moaning if its not!

The wireless transmitter is now in place and sends updated information to the wireless monitor every second or so.

The following pictures are of the display unit itself, which is wireless, so you can place it anywhere in the home you like.

I would  like to add that at this point in time, I know very little about kilowatts and electricity in general, what I do know from trying this out, is that when I turned on the oven, the display unit power usage jumped to from .0886 KW to 3 + kilowatts and then at the same time I turned on the Microwave and it jumped to over 4 + kilowatts.

I don’t think you need to have a degree in electrical science to figure out how to use the unit to your advantage.

Another great feature is that you can switch between displaying your energy usage in kilowatts, to showing how much you actually spend in monetary terms. (that takes a little more setting up but is interesting to see how much you spend per hour for example)

Just running with the normal household appliances

Turning on the oven results in the display unit being updated within half a second to 3.28 KW. Wow!

Now I have just turned on the microwave so the power usage is now 4.50 KW. Cool. So I now know that the microwave consumes 1.3 KW and the oven, 2.3 KW, nearly double than that of the microwave.

I think all in all, its a pretty useful gadget. Its certainly enlightend me as to the energy consumption in my home and I am now probably going to start looking at other energy resources to get my electric bill down even further!