Low Impact

So you’re doing all the right things to reduce your impact on the globe - you’ve switched to fluorescent lights, you turn off appliances at the switch, you’re buying five star rated white goods. It’d be nice if you knew that it was all making a difference!

I bought myself a Centameter about 12 months ago after seeing one at a demonstration environmentally-friendly house setup by ACTEW. It consists of 2 pieces - a transmitter that clamps around the electricity wire in your meter box, and a display unit (pictured). The transmitter monitors how much electricity is being consumed by the house and transmits that information wirelessly to the display unit. From memory, I paid around $200, including installation.

In terms of changing my behaviour, and reducing my impact on the environment, it is one of the best purchases I have made. The big breakthrough is letting me see in an instant what effect my actions are having. Prior to this, I used my quarterly electricity bills as a guide, but that’s a coarse measure. With a device like this, I can (for instance) turn off the TV, and see how much my consumption drops by.

Some immediate discoveries after purchasing the Centameter were:

• Just how much electricity my hot water unit uses (3.8 kilowatts when actually heating!) - great motivation to turn it off when taking a trip away!

• The fact that my Topfield digital video recorder uses 50 watts when active - we now turn it to standby when we turn the TV off, saving 383 kW/h a year (that step alone can represent 300 kg of CO2 saved annually).

• The fact that when the house is “at rest”, we’re still using 170 watts (made up of some computers and standby appliances).

There are a number of other devices out there that accomplish a similar function. In England, there is a device called the “Wattson” which appears to be a stylish version of the Centameter, but also offers the ability to download data onto your computer. There are also a number of devices that act as “pass-through” plugs that you put between the power point and an appliance to measure the power draw of one particular device. Jaycar appear to sell such a thing (CAT. NO. MS6115) for $40.

To my mind, this sort of thing is a must-have for people interested in reducing their power consumption. I’d love to see the electricity companies upgrade their meters to offer this sort of capability. Being able to see the impact of your choices on your electricity consumption (and thus, greenhouse gas emissions) makes a big difference in both the effectiveness of your choices, and your motivation!

I’ll finish off with a quote that seems particularly fitting here:

When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science.
- William Thompson, Lord Kelvin (1821-1907) - Popular Lectures and Addresses [1891-1894]

Categories: efficiency, environment, green, reduce