Before your very eyes …

New energy monitoring products aim to drive down usage. Tom Shelley reports A new range of energy monitors will show users what individual appliances are consuming. This encourages more economical usage, so they are turned down or off when possible – or even replaced. Such ideas have been mooted before, but so far have related more to the home or office appliance level. Now Cambridge-based Green Energy Options aims to change all that with its Livewire system. One version, GEO Enforma, is now being trialled at Hope Valley School, Derbyshire. It uses several sensors to gather information about energy use, which is then output to a local network and presented on screen, so potential savings can be identified. The next step is to turn this into a form where it will engage with individual home users. “I don’t want to make it visible on a meter,” stressed Green Energy Options operations director Simon Anderson, speaking recently at Venturefest. “I want to make it visible and accessible to everyone. One of the challenges is how to make it engage with the user. We need the power of five: five things, all of which we have to do. We have to make it interesting. We have to generate understanding. We have to get users to engage. We have to encourage them to do more things about it. And, finally, we have to get them to do them as a habit.” According to Anderson, more than 50% of energy consumed in this country is in buildings. “Cars have computers that can display miles per gallon information. Our purpose is to provide people with the means to cut carbon emissions by making energy consumption visible. Smart energy systems are what we are looking at, getting it down to the appliance level. Prices will be from about £150.” Level 0 will to be user installed and able to look at up to six individual appliances. Level 1, also user installed, will show ‘Lifestyle profiles’. Level 2 is a bespoke system, with up to 100 sensors. Visible current A South Wales inventor has devised an LED-based indicator system that tells operators information about current flow. Bob Gardner of Bluelake Technology, based in Barry, says that his Indi-Link device acts as a bi-directional current sensor, indicating the presence, polarity and phase of the current. “When a current flows it reflects the dynamic electrical events occurring within a circuit,” he says. “These events are normally concealed within otherwise passive wiring. Being able to render them visible greatly assists in making faults and conditions transparent.” He says that industrial control systems, especially those operating in hazardous areas, are most likely to benefit. The device has a detection threshold of 3mA, yet can carry up to 10A continuously. It will work with AC and DC systems. The only downside, he concedes, is that the device is line-powered, so causes a fractional drop in line voltage. “Armed with these devices, solutions are possible to provide a condition monitoring, closed loop feedback, signalling and signal isolation at low cost, while adding functionality,” he says. The technique has been patented, and recently won a silver medal at the International Inventions Fair in Geneva. Pointers * System uses a distributed sensor network to gather and transmit information about energy usage by individual appliances * The key is getting users to engage with the system and respond usefully to the information being presented to them * Indi-Link shows current presence, polarity and phase, and has a detection threshold of 3mA