Energy Monitor Introduction
Here is my first video for videobloggingweek2007, an introduction to a device that measures how many watts appliances are using, and an initial experiment adjusting the brightness of the screen on my iMac, with the desired energy-saving results.
I shot about 20 minutes of footage when experimenting, but the results of these tests are the important thing rather than video of them being conducted. On the one hand video can have more impact, but a database of results would be much easier to search and consume, and as we shall see over the coming days, video uses quite a lot of power to capture, encode and watch. Hopefully I will be able to get my hands on a new mobile phone ths week, the Nokia N95, which may work well enough to use as a lower energy substitute.
April 6th, 2007 at 12:27 am
Good to see you videoblogging, and with a purpose no less.
My dad’s an electrical engineer at heart, so I have had a volt meter in my hand since I could walk. I particularly liked running currents through different substances and measuring the resistance. I also really like the word Ohm.
Also good for this sort of thing, get a sensitive probe thermometer and check the seals on your windows and doors for temperature leakage. I remember my dad doing that when I was young, and talking about how much money it saved us in heating bills. He is a serial insulator. Our water heater is wrapped in packing blankets.
April 6th, 2007 at 3:03 pm
Cheers
Yes the word Ohm is nice on several levels 
Cheers for the thermometer tips. Some of my future videos will detail how my efforts are mostly quite limited, and how the main uses of energy in our home are not optimised at all - eg we dont even have double-glazing yet, so in many ways this house missed out on the earlier round of energy saving initiatives that happened throughout the 80’s in the UK. All the old housing stock in this country is really a problem, whilst the regulations for new houses are slowly improving (eg new builds now need to be pressure-tested to make sure theres not to much air passing through and losing a lot of heat).
April 6th, 2007 at 7:22 pm
hurray for steve vlogging. i love these.
April 19th, 2007 at 11:19 am
Holy smoke! cutting 20-25% of power use by turning the brightness down!
I’m amazed that the imac doesn’t use more power idling than the TV… or the XBox.
I’m going to have to get myself one of these monitors. I still have a 14 inch sony CRT TV in the living room, which everyone laughs at because it’s sat in the middle of a huge built-in TV cupboard that the last owners built for their monstrous flat screen. I’ve been thinking of replacing it with a computer & monitor - either, as you know, with Windows Media Center or with an iMac.
I’d like to test the power consumptions of the different choices and see what’s what.
It can’t be long before energy consumption is a measure that companies publish to compete when selling their products, like showing fat and salt content in foods. Or maybe something that will be compulsory.
Interesting stuff.
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