Control and Optimization of Energy Consumption

Every home, office, hotel or restaurant has a counter installed by the power supplier. Thanks to it we know how many kW·h have consumed from the grid and pay for it in accordance with current tariffs. Many people are upset by the big energy consumption: they want to be assured that the electricity meter is working properly and find a legitimate means of savings.

Electricity prices are steadily rising as well as the amount of equipment in every home. All this leads to the fact that electricity costs become a significant part of the budget. Moreover, ordinary meter shows only total consumption, which does not allow to identify the problem. Fraudsters use this situation and offer to buy a «great energy-saving device», but no miracle is happening: the electricity bill does not diminish.

Using household power meters or a complete power monitoring system, you can understand the actual consumption of the washing machine, refrigerator, TV and other household appliances throughout the day, month or year.

Controlling the electricity consumption allows you to find the most effective way of savings. For example, it may be that the main consumer is the storage water heater. There may be several reasons for this: poor boiler isolation, low volume, non-optimal operation or lack of heat exchanger.

It is possible that the reason for the high consumption is related to heating or lighting. All this needs to be clarified before you start saving. Be sure: Whatever the problem of excessive energy consumption, it always has a technical solution.

Furthermore, the availability of a monitoring system changes our behavior. Practice shows that people who have detailed information about their own energy consumption do not use the TV as background and turn off the lights coming out of the room or use dishwasher during the night when a reduced tariff applies. All this helps to reduce energy consumption and lower the electricity bill.

In many cases, the sufficient solution to the problem may be a household power meter. This meter allows you to know the actual power consumption of the devices and the amount of energy consumed by them for a certain period of time. With such power meter we learned, for example, what is the price of a ride with electrical bike.

Complex solutions for simultaneous control of several loops and for more detailed analysis of energy consumption allow tracking parameters remotely, draw graphics and store history.

Тhe accuracy of measuring instruments is important in any case, so we can divide them into two categories.

The first category includes the contactless devices, which measure only the current flowing through the phase cable and the mains voltage is fixed in the device settings. Since the mains voltage is not stable, calculated values of consumed energy will have the corresponding error.

To the second category we refer the devices that measure not only current but also the actual mains voltage. The accuracy of these devices is greater.