Working out how much energy your home consumes is not the simple task it’s often advertised to be. Hydro companies charge different rates for different times and appliances use different levels of electricity between different tasks. Energy use monitors can measure each appliance, but often deliver so many numbers that it’s still up to you to invest the time and math to figure it all out. The Conserve Insight from Belkin aims to deliver just the bottom line on how much an appliance is costing you per money and carbon footprint. While it is less complex than others on the market, it’s no less confusing.

 

Energy Use Monitors

The basic idea is simple enough. You plug the monitor into a wall outlet and then plug your appliance into the monitor. Connected between the two, it measures how many watts of electricity the appliance is drawing at that moment.

The amount of electricity an appliance uses tends to change constantly. A refrigerator, for example, uses more energy when the door is open than closed, when its temperature dial is set lower, or filled with food. A video game console uses less energy if it is set to the main menu system than if it’s playing a game, but more energy if the game is being played against others over the internet. Watching the numbers change as your devices switch between different modes can be very educational as to how electricity is being consumed in your home.

To reach a more useful number, you need to leave the monitor plugged in for a long period of time so it can calculate an average amount across all the changes. Belkin’s monitor needs a minimum of forty-five minutes before it has enough data to do this, but suggests you leave it connected for a full twenty-four hours to get more accurate results.

Carbon Dioxide And Dollars

To get proper use from the monitor you need to enter in two pieces of information; a kWh price rate from your utility bill and a CO2 conversion factor.

Electricity companies can charge different rates for different time periods under tiered or time-of-use plans so you’re forced to pick one to represent the average price. Belkin suggests you might also find a CO2 rate on your bill, but to be honest it’s not the kind of figure utility companies like to share, nor is it easy information to find online. To help, Belkin ships the monitor with averages for both rates taken “from your geographic region” pre-installed. I’m not sure how reliable they are, but they seem close enough to generate a ballpark estimate.

With those two values and the average amount of watts consumed from your appliance, the monitor will forecast an approximate cost of dollars and carbon dioxide over both thirty days and one year. With that bottom line you can then compare one device to another.

Pen And Paper

The more expensive monitors on the market can also measure line volts, current amps, and temperature. Some are built for both outdoor and inside use, include built-in clocks or timers, and can even upload information to a personal computer for further analysis.

At $30, Belkin’s monitor is simple and meant for indoor use only. You plug it in, wait, and then write down the results on a piece of paper. As soon as you unplug it the information’s gone. While it’s true the other brands can be a bit overwhelming in their features, it would be handy if you could save your results somehow or be able to set it to record results over the course of twelve hours or a full day instead of having to remember to return and note the figures yourself.

Better Design

In physical design Belkin beats the completion soundly. Not only is their monitor rugged and attractive, but it uses a separate LCD display linked by a five foot cord. This allows the display to be propped up on a counter, tabletop, or even a bookshelf, saving you the pain of having to bend over and try to read the screen from the wall outlet by the floor. The large, clear screen makes it easy to read at a glance and the three friendly buttons make it easy to switch between different measurements.

Is That Your Final Answer?

Where the Conserve Insight fails is in delivering one set of clear, definitive results. It can’t calculate proper forecasts for carbon and dollar amounts until after the forty-five minute mark, but goes ahead and displays inaccurate “instantaneous” numbers during that initial period anyway. That’s confusing.

After the forty-five minutes are up, it will continue to re-calculate the average watts consumed every second and so the results can differ greatly after an hour, a few hours, or even the next day. The longer you wait, the more accurate the numbers can be, but there’s no clear guidance as to how long is best. The hint is one day, but if you have thirty items in your house, it’ll take you thirty days to get through them all.

While the monitor will calculate the average amount of electricity a device uses over time, it doesn’t display or share that information. Nor can it tell you how much electricity that device uses after an hour or even a day. The assumption is that you don’t need to be concerned with those results, that it’s enough to let Belkin skip having to display them and work out the dollars and carbon footprint for you. Knowing how much energy the devices in your home use is kind of the whole point and necessary if you want to do your own calculations.

Simple Confusion

The Conserve Insight offers a friendlier design, a convenient remote display, and a focus on simplicity with fewer features, but lacks guidance and clarity as to how it’s meant to be used to get final results. You’re left to figure it out on your own and if you can’t or are unwilling, there’s a good chance this will end up abandoned in a kitchen drawer, fated for wind up in a recycle box or worse, the land fill. The best solution is still waiting on the drawing board, I’m afraid.