There's one obvious question thrown up by any device which promises to monitor your electricity use: how much electricity does the device itself use?
Obviously it would be a lot better for the planet if we didn't need new gadgets to cajole us into using less energy, but for many people the only thing that works is seeing their own usage in cold hard numbers. You might have had that nagging feeling you're wasting electricity at home but when you see the numbers, whether it's in pounds, watts, or kg of C02, it's hard not to be spurred on into doing something about it.
I've discovered that EDF Energy's EcoManager uses less than 0.168 kWh a week, which means it costs about 2.7p a week to run. That's less than £1.50 for the whole year and I reckon it's saved me way more than that in the first three weeks of using it.
The EcoManager really starts to earn its crust when you use it to turn appliances off remotely. At first, it took me a while to figure out how to do this, but it's easy once you've got the hang of it: just press the numbered button corresponding to the transmitter you want to turn off, wait until it flashes, then press the on/off button on the EcoManager.
Turning off my three transmitters, which each have at least two or three appliances plugged into them, now takes seconds and saves my own energy going around the house turning them all off.
The only problem is, I can't get EDF Energy's The Waltons advert out of my head, so I end up wishing my TV, radio and washing machine goodnight. Oh dear ...
About the author
Hannah is a freelance journalist who lives in east London with her partner. Despite often being found watching TV while working on her laptop with the radio playing in the kitchen, Hannah considers herself environmentally aware: she takes a keen interest in growing her own vegetables and cycles to work. Here she re-evaluates her energy consumption at home thanks to EDF Energy's EcoManager.
