Re: What are the benefits of an Electrical Panel Monitor?
Posted: Tue Jan 08, 2013 6:25 pm
I have a GEM (instead of going the ECM route), and I buggered back and forth for well over a year deciding whether or not I want to get one. I live in Fairbanks Alaska where our energy is about .25 cents a KW. My family was already pretty frugle about our energy, but I have definitely found some savings from it. For example, I looked Monday morning and found out my well pump hadn't shut off yet (after several hours of running). Was able to run home and turn off it (pipe is broken at the well head, separate issue and really sucks), and while I still got quite a bit of water on my driveway, it could have been a lot worse. I've managed to turn off almost all of my phantom power suckers that are sucking energy while we aren't even home, and know that I need to replace the power supply in my server with a smaller one because it's the biggest energy eater in my house. With the GEM, I can monitor temperatures in and around the house, so if the temperature inside goes below 55 or so, I know something is wrong and I can go home and fix whatever it is.
I use smartenergy groups website (where the pictures below came from), and will be figuring out some way to internally add alerts for me to know that something isn't right (lights are on too long, something's sucking power longer then it should be, etc) and it can't email/text me that something is right.
And I'm a data geek that also likes charts and graphs to see things
To me, it was worth every penny. And Brultech/Smartenergy groups have been beyond helpful in keeping things working/improving on what they have provided.
I use smartenergy groups website (where the pictures below came from), and will be figuring out some way to internally add alerts for me to know that something isn't right (lights are on too long, something's sucking power longer then it should be, etc) and it can't email/text me that something is right.
And I'm a data geek that also likes charts and graphs to see things
To me, it was worth every penny. And Brultech/Smartenergy groups have been beyond helpful in keeping things working/improving on what they have provided.