Secret files on solar energy collaborator, Part II: Dave Hampton
A review of the highly acclaimed ‘Wattson’ remote energy display meter, which comes with full-function renewable energy monitoring. £90. (One extra sensor needed. Available from the Good Energy Shop.)
I have had Electrisaves, and Efergys, and Owls in the past, as you might imagine, and I am a huge fan of all of them. But the Wattson is the BMW of remote energy meters.
For those not familiar with the technology, the beauty of a remote (wireless) electricity use display unit is that you and everyone who lives in your house all get a clear signal as to how much juice you are burning up, at any moment: ie ‘real-time’ feedback. The unit shows you very clearly, with large digit LCD or LED displays, how fast the electricity meter is currently spinning. How fast you are clocking up power charges.
Most people set theirs to £££. The Wattson tells you what your projected annual bill would be, if you use electricity like you are now, all year. So at night-time it falls to maybe £100 or £200 or so: that’s the bill for maintaining all the background standby base-load energy. Put on a kettle, and it leaps to £3000. But thankfully only while the kettle is boiling.
You can see the Watts that are On. Hence the name of course (Watts On). And even if you know nothing about watts, you soon get used to whether the number on display is good, bad or normal, for you. Crucially, the device gives you the heads up if you have left something on somewhere, unknowing. An immersion heater, an outside light, an electric towel rail. Catching big mistakes such as these early could yield massive savings.
But so too does keeping a weather eye on the nett total of TVs, computers and lights left on at any time. Electricity bill savings of £100 every year or more are commonly reported, and for a unit that only costs £90, that is money rapidly paid back. Plus fossil fuel waste averted, and another valuable half ton of CO2 emissions saved.
What is also brilliant about the Wattson is that it educates and teaches you and everyone in the house slowly, but with full reality check, watt by watt, and what uses watt. Instead of using electricity as if ‘flying blind’, an act of faith, with hope and a prayer the next bill isn’t too high, you can see your next bill coming before the electricity company can, and take evasive action.
The Wattson gives you back the power to control the power you use and waste.
It gives you a warm glow
The (low consumption) multicolour LEDs under the display unit’s tummy glow according to the rate of energy being used at any moment. Thus it glows red when the kettle or oven is on, purple when energy use is medium, and a nice restful and assuring dim blue/lilac when the home is being frugal. The display unit is mains powered, and of course, hardly uses any. You can unplug it and take it anywhere in the house with you, but I found it better to leave it plugged in, irony noted, but it saves much more than it uses.
All Good Holmes should have one
As well as the display unit, the Wattson also records hourly, daily and monthly data. This is very easily downloaded onto any computer using bespoke software called ‘Holmes’. You can then view graphs of patterns of energy use daily, weekly and monthly. Thus you can see how you are doing, spot good progress, or lapses of power attentiveness. You can take as much detailed, or as little general information away with you as you need. For some of us knowing that next years leccy bill will be £100 lower than last year’s – despite the unit price increases – is all we need to know, this year.
But can Wattson cope with Renewable Energy? Yes We (It) Can!
As I write this, my Wattson is giving me that warm glow again. Not the colours I mentioned before, but a completely different colour – ORANGE – indicating that my home is currently EXPORTING energy. 750 Watts to be precise at the moment. Nudge the device once and it tells me that the house is currently consuming IN USE POWER of 352 Watts. Nudge it one more time and it tells me the GENERATED POWER is 1102 Watts. It’s a nice bright sunny Sunday afternoon and my PVs are generating three times as much as I am using. The nice warm glow returns :o) Heaven. It feels good.
Don’t forget the Carbon Dave!
Every couple of hours of sunshine that my nine panels turn into electricity will avoid a pint of oil-equivalent fossil fuel being burnt at the power station, and will also avoid a kilo of CO2 being emitted into the air we share. (We are encouraged by some dirty old fossils to doubt whether this invisible CO2 is harmful, but… actually… it clearly is.)
Beauty is as beauty does
Personally, as I said, I think my panels look beautiful. My youngest daughter said she thought they looked ugly. But it’s all relative. If we could see the pollution, if we could see the power station, if we could see the rail truck loads of coal (goods inwards) and the slag heap loads of ash (bad waste outwards), if we could see the nuclear waste, if we could see the CO2… Worse, if we could see that most recent wars have been all about oil; relative to that I think my solar panels are very beautiful – part of an elegant resilient least-regrets local solution, and not part of the pollution.
Wealth and safety
Maybe it was a rush for gold (greed) that helped get us into this planetary mess.
For a long time ‘greens’ have ignored the wealthy, and either regarded them as inevitably part of the problem or just ignored them. (Until they wanted a benefactor that is.) But we will not save the world by ignoring the wealthy. Neither are the wealthy ignoring the problem, nor their responsibilities any longer, if indeed they ever did. They are realising that they are in a unique position to give, to leave a legacy. To make things happen.
No number of pure ethical greens can save the world without wealth. Not peacefully at least. If it currently requires money to do things that reduce emissions, then the wealthy are part of the solution. Where will the money come from? From where it is now!
Where better than Marlow, in 2010, to start a power revolution that will help heal the world?
Don’t think of it so much as PV or not PV.
Think of it as a small symbolic gesture of leadership.
“I will, even if you won’t.”
“I’ll clean this planet up, starting with me, even if others won’t.”
Care to take the plunge? The water is lovely. You will not regret it.
Find out more by watching this video
