Electric And Gas Monitor - The Saveometer

[Automan]

Current Cost still have no sign of a Gas Meter reader and no date for their OptiSmart electric meter reader and again Onzo have failed to meet their own deadline for their website (the third deadline they have missed).

Anyway why browsing amazon uk I see another energy meter is on offer and this one includes a gas meter add-on that is on sale now!

The electric meter alas is still a primitive clamp device but the display looks interesting and even has an atomic clock.

Details at their website including pictures of compatible gas meters.

http://www.saveometer.com/default.aspx

I have ordered via Amazon as all I got was an error at the final checkout stage on their website. Price the same BTW @ £121.85

Automan

[JohnS]

Looks interesting, especially the gas bit.  Must check if my meter is ok.

Don't they realise that GasSafe has replaced CORGI ?

[MR GUS]

I'm weasel peed off with the ambiguous answers from Onzo too, ..."manyana manyana" 
beginning to think   

[Automan]

My new gadget arrived today

Display is nice and big but out of box experiance is spoiled because you should fully charge the 3 x NiCad's in the transmitter before your use it for maximum run-time.

Transmitter can be charged using the base of the base unit.

Gas transmitter was easy to fit and comes with a really long lead to its transmitter (with 12 year battery fitted).

This has to be paired with the electric transmitter (not the base unit) and again was no issue.

What I did not realise and if I had it would have put me off buying it is that it has no real-time watts being used (or cubic feet/metres).

It only displays this data in money terms e.g. it says 9.8p / £0.03 this week £0.00 this month and £0.00 for gas (I am not sure how much gas has to be used to register a pulse from the connection).

It has a LED which you can set to change colour on live load and thus the kettle makes it go green to red.


After it has been on longer I will take some photos of it.

Automan.

[JohnS]

Automan,

How does it compare to your Onzo now that you have myonzo? 

For just electricty monitoring, what are the pros and cons of each?

John

[Automan]

The Saveometer is a bit of a let down and so far I would suggest to Saveyourmoney and not buy one.

I mainly wanted this for Gas consumption and for that so far it has told me nothing.

For Gas consumption all it displays is the total in full pounds for the current month which still says £00 - and thats all it ever will tell you, the current month with no history stored

My meter it says should produce one pulse for every Cubic Ft of gas used and I was hoping this device would tell me how much my hot water was costing but I guess if it does only read full pounds the data will be meaningless.

Of course, I may have a issue with my gas sensor or just that I have not used £1.00 in gas yet.

John,
I would go for the onzo device which is the most accurate reading one I have used so far and now its website works you can view historic data in quite some detail.

The Saveometer will just give you a total for last periods in pounds.pence and thats it.

The only plus point of the Saveometer is the back-lit display so it is easier to read (except the decimal point is small and thus when it says 93p is it 93p or 9.3p for current energy cost) if only it had something useful to display e.g. Watts (if only as an option).

Automan.

[Automan]

The cost of a cubic foot of gas?

From a rough check I made from my last bill I make it £0.011 per cubic foot.

If that is correct and this unit only reads pounds with no decimal point I will have to use about 90 cubic feet before it registers.

If that is the case it sucks

Automan.

[JohnS]

Automan,

I reckon I use less than 25-50p a day to heat water.  Depends on the season and how many are at home.  In winter gas also does the central heating so it is a lot more.  If you just use gas for hot water, the Saveometer is not fit for purpose.

Although you could put a high price in for either gas, e.g. £3.40 per kWh to trick the Saveometer in displaying every cu ft.

John

[Automan]

Automan,

I reckon I use less than 25-50p a day to heat water.  Depends on the season and how many are at home.  In winter gas also does the central heating so it is a lot more.  If you just use gas for hot water, the Saveometer is not fit for purpose.

Although you could put a high price in for either gas, e.g. £3.40 per kWh to trick the Saveometer in displaying every cu ft.

John

That is a good idea.

I was thinking of doing much the same to electric making each Kw cost £0.10 so it would then more a less display watts.

I use gas for heating and hot water but thanks to my fancy remote control Honeywell thermostatic radiator valves the heating has not been on much today.

Automan.

[Automan]

This morning when I woke up the unit for gas was displaying "This Month" £ 0.01 so I guess it just says £ 00 if you don't have the gas meter sensor.

So at least it does have a cost resolution of 1p and I would love to think I only used 1p of gas in the last 18 hours (or perhaps it only starts at midnight?)

I have re-checked my units setting for cubic feet and cost per Kwh which I have at 3.5p (default is 3.4p).

Will report back more later...

Automan.

[Automan]

I must admit now to being a little confused.

I thought the big digits (in black) on a gas meter were in hundreds of cubic feet with the two smaller digits being the tens.

My last monthly bill was for 74 of the big units which cost £81.50 which equates to 90 pence per unit.

Thus I think my thing should be saying at least £1.80

My brain hurts  

My bill BTW says 74 Imperial Units = 2336.33 Kwh

Automan.

[Automan]

Sorted 

The big digits are in 100's of cubic feet and as I mentioned earlier the decimal point is quite small (that's my excuse).

Value 19 in the configuration was 0.32 when it needed to be changed to 32.0

If you have a gas meter that measures in “Imperial Units” or 100‟s of cubic feet, such as the Schlumberger R5 above, please set mode 19 to a value of 32.0

Now I have made that small change my gas consumption has gone up from 2p to £2.24

Thus I now assume it will go up in smaller amount per cubic foot which cost 1.1 pence.

Automan.

[Automan]

Hours later and a few cubic feet of gas have been used but the device still says £ 2.24 

I have a nasty feeling that the display data only updates every 100 cubic feet rather than per cubic foot.

If so, the next update I guess will make it say £ 3.36 when in reality the data available is in units valued just over a penny.

If this is the case I shall email the makers to confirm.

Automan.

[Automan]

Unit has just gone to £ 3.36 so indeed it only updates the cost figure in 100 cubic feet chunks.

Also even if you were burning vast amounts of gas you still won't get a live reading as the sender only sends the data once an hour

your gas readings will start in 1 hour – the gas transmitter sends data once an hour to the display.

I am pretty disappointed with this product and how it is supposed to save you money I am not sure.

e.g. on day 2 of a month it will tell you this month gas and electric have cost you x amount. What it needs to tell you is at this rate in a month or a quarter or a year it will cost you x.

It does no projections of energy consumption.

Another problem is the cost of fuel, my gas for example cost more for the first units and then a lower price.

The unit, like most only permits one value so they say divide last bill total by units for an average price. However, for gas the load is very seasonal and thus will lead to error.

Automan.

[Automan]

No response to my query yet but I have noted something new...



It does not know how to display £10.10 properly

Automan.