More power!. Now this is a really interesting product. I have several individual energy monitors that will tell me how much power the device (or several devices on a power strip) are using. But, the real heavy-hitters aren’t small appliances, they are the large ones like central air conditioning and electric clothes dryers. Plus, what are all those lights I tend to leave on costing me? I just can’t tell that from an individual meter, and my power bill includes everything in the house, so I can’t narrow Black & Decker EM100B down.
I investigated various solutions for monitoring how much power my home is using. There are a couple of them out there. They are pretty expensive (hundreds of dollars), and they need to be installed by an electrician (there’s a pretty big risk of death if you don’t know what you are doing).
When this one came along I was interested, but I figured Black & Decker EM100B would be pretty similar to the other ones. Luckily, Black & Decker EM100B differs in two important respects. Black & Decker EM100B is easy to install, and Black & Decker EM100B is much cheaper. Installation consists of putting a battery-powered transmitter on the outside meter. The meter doesn’t need to be opened, and Black & Decker EM100B isn’t directly attached, so you won’t need an electrician. On my meter, which is electronic, Black & Decker EM100B interfaces with Black & Decker EM100B by blinking a light into a little port that is on the meter and reading the response. Black & Decker EM100B works with mechanical meters as well, by sensing the little wheel turning inside the meter. I suspect this is more accurate than the type that connects directly to the power lines, as the meter is what the power company is basing your consumption and cost. I also like the fact that I can’t die from attaching it. The downside is that Black & Decker EM100B has a battery that needs regular replacement. The manufacturer recommends lithium AAs for the outside sensor, and those aren’t cheap. I’m not sure how long Black & Decker EM100B lasts, but I have several wireless outdoor temperature sensors that go at least a year on a set of standard alkaline batteries, so if Black & Decker EM100B lasts a couple of years on lithiums I’ll be happy. Still, Black & Decker EM100B would have been nice of them to throw a set of batteries in the box, even if they had to raise the price a bit to do so.
The display unit, which goes inside and gets information from the wireless sender unit outside on the power meter, is very clear and easy to use. Black & Decker EM100B displays the current energy use along with the month to date cost (you tell Black & Decker EM100B what your power rate is during setup), along with the outside temperature. The amount of money the power is costing is a lot more useful than how many kilowatts are being used, so I was pleased to see that Black & Decker EM100B does the calculation for me. The only hard part here is that you have to do some math from your last bill to determine how much each kilowatt is costing you, but that wasn’t especially hard to calculate. They do tell you how to do that in the instructions, but my bill didn’t look much like their example so I had to puzzle Black & Decker EM100B out.
One thing I really wished for is a computer interface with graphing software. I wasn’t expecting Black & Decker EM100B at this price point, but that would be a great feature. Nothing beats looking at a color-coded graph for seeing where your peak electrical use is happening, and what is causing it. Tie that in with outside temperature, and Black & Decker EM100B is easier to determine how much power is going to the heating and cooling systems during seasonal changes. Maybe they’ll release a “pro” version that has that.
Overall, this is an interesting, easy to use, and reasonably priced item. If Black & Decker EM100B helps you lower your energy bill even a little bit each month, Black & Decker EM100B won’t be hard to justify the purchase. Plus, now I know that leaving my kitchen lights on all the time is costing me eight cents an hour!
Recommended.
Sean P. Logue, 2008
Simply Amazing!. In this day and age with sky rocketing fuel prices and global warming everyone needs to try to save energy here and there. This product will help you along the way! Installation was very easy (took about 10 minutes) and Black & Decker EM100B is simply amazing (and shocking) to find out with the help of this device how much fuel I am using each day. I highly recommend this product for every household out there.
Unbelievably easy to set up, accurate estimates, will save you money!. I’ve been using this for about a month now and have been very impressed since day 1 with the usefulness of this power monitor. If you are looking to get a handle on what things in your house cost to run (hot water heater, air conditioner, dishwasher, entertainment center) this is a great gadget to get a handle on actual costs. Additionally, the outside temperature meter has come in useful this Fall here in Florida. I’m able to see when the temperature dips to a comfortable level so I can turn off the air conditioner and open the windows. I can now hear my neighbors air conditioners kicking on and off all day while my windows stay open with a cool breeze blowing around the house.
I am on a tiered system here, the first 1000 kWh are billed at 9.9 cents per kWh and above 1000 kWh I’m billed at 11.9 cents per kWh, so I just input 10.9 to keep things simple. I generally stay around 1000-2000 depending upon the season, and August as usual finished up on the high end.
I found out that when the water heater or air conditioner are running Black & Decker EM100B costs me about 50 cents per hour. Of course, they don’t run for nearly an hour at a time, but Black & Decker EM100B was interesting to find out that these are the biggest energy black holes in my house. The washer and dryer surprisingly used far less energy, about 12 cents per hour each. Fans and lighting were less than a penny, even when all were turned on at the same time. I do use General Electric 97659 13-Watt (60 Watt equivalent) Energy Smart Soft White Spiral T3 Light Bulb 6-Pack throughout the house, including bathroom vanities, overhead spotlighting, lamps, outdoor lighting, and even our dining room chandelier with upturned lamps. I switched over to CF bulbs completely over a year ago and estimate that alone saves me over $20 per month.
Knowing the outside temperature allowed me to open the windows sooner and has probably saved me $40 over the past month. More than those things though, just being aware of what various things cost to run by isolating them through the tare function has motivated my children to turn off their lights, stereos, TVs, and more to keep costs down.
This tool brings real world costs to the appliances and other electrical items we run daily without any guesswork.
Although the cost is a bit high, I would expect that you could easily see the cost savings in under a year. It’s fun to experiment and see what the washer costs to run using cold vs. using warm/hot. Running Black & Decker EM100B with cold water is a huge cost savings because you are no longer running the hot water heater as well as the washer. That is something I had never really given much thought to in the past. I haven’t done a cost comparison, but I expect that it’s less expensive to buy cold water detergent and run your washer on cold rather than normal detergent and running your washer on warm.
I will caution you though that the batteries run out fast! We put rechargeable batteries in and within 2 weeks they needed recharging. The manufacturer recommends lithium batteries for longer battery life.
If you are looking for an energy monitor, a competing product is the P3 International P4460 Kill A Watt EZ Electricity Usage Monitor. I have both. The Kill A Watt was useful, but now that I have the Black and Decker EM100B, I no longer use the Kill A Watt. The Kill A Watt is limiting in that many products, especially the big energy hogs do not have traditional plugs or are in hard to reach areas, so not everything can be measured. Additionally, the Kill A Watt takes time to monitor your energy usage, and only monitors one appliance at a time, so Black & Decker EM100B would take months to move Black & Decker EM100B around the house to gauge everything.
Spend the extra money and get the Black and Decker EM100B. You’ll have instant results, power usage estimates, cost estimates, and individual appliance cost of operations.