TED5000 Ordered and on the way

We have put an order in for a smart energy meter that we are really excited about. If you have not heard about The Energy Detective (TED5000), it is a home energy monitoring device which is paired with the new Google Powermeter Service.

From the TED site,

"How exactly does TED help? It's really a simple concept - If you can measure it, you can manage it. That's what TED is all about. An intuitive, real-time, accurate electricity monitor, TED monitors your energy usage and presents the information to you in a simple, easy-to-understand format. When it comes to energy management, TED is simply the best. Period."

It works by taking readings as quickly as once every 2 seconds from your Fuse box, and sending them through ethernet to your computer, and the supplied "Footprints" software. From here, the program keeps track of your energy usage almost instantly.

Now there are a number of "Smart Meters" on the market, and the reason we chose TED is because Google is working exclusively with them for their Google Powermeter service. Powermeter is an inline alternative to the footprints software included in your package.

I am a big fan of google and free services including google analytics, which offers graphing, and tons of other info about your websites. Google powermeter works in the same way as this and should prove to be a really great tool for monitoring our energy usage that can be accessed from any internet device.

The TED5000 comes at a price of $200 and up. For the cheapest price (what we got) you receive what you need in order to monitor and measure from one main power source, and stream the info over ethernet to your computer, or google powermeter. For more money, you can get an LCD display that displays your up to the minute stats, and other materials to monitor other power sources (solar, wind, another fusebox, etc.). We decided against the LCD display because of the fact that the info is redaliy available from any compute we can get our hands on, so it is not needed. This price is comparable to other smart meters out there, but being able to use Google Powermeter is what sold it for us.

More posts to come as soon as it gets to our house, gets installed, and starts giving us valuable data about our energy consumption.