Hi IDE,
Had a massive amount of work to do but…. Here is the vague idea. The concept is a piggy-back device which measures power, for the retard electrician (AKA. everyone who isn’t an electrician). It will be small, compact and hopefully fairly glamorous and measure the power consumption of a single product.
Please let me know any good or even better, bad points about the concepts!
Feedback appreciated!
Much respect
Andy Wilde
2 comments:
Hi,
Usually power consumption is stated on the product, particularly household appliances. However there are a lot of appliances that don’t state the power consumption, that’s probably where your device comes in, i think.
Electrical power is measured from current (I) and voltage (V). P=IV. Your device would need to be a volt meter and amp meter combined to give the power consumption of the device. Power is in watts (W) or J/s (joules per second) however the retard electrician, like you say probably can’t relate to these units. However im pretty sure they could relate to their electrical bills ie – Kw-h (Kilowatt hours) is the unit a quarterly bill states and uses to charge you your fee. Perhaps if the user could input their total Kw-h usage per last billing period, that could be used to give a percentage value of the amount of power used by that appliance per billing period etc. It could also divide it up and give you a percentage in term of daily power usage. However you need the appliance to be running for an amount of time (As Power consumption is dependent upon time), to accumulate enough power to be comparable to the Kw-h usage per billing period or per day etc. Therefore your device could not give instantaneous power consumptions because it would be the same as the sticker on the back of the product (Ie 200W or 200 J/s), it wouldn’t mean anything, you would have to have your device on for some time, catch my drift, its somewhat confusing
Got any other questions, ask us engineers, we did a whole unit on electrical engineering, we pretty much know more than a electrician anyway, Catch
Daniel D.
really good idea andy. very green. this idea would definitely improve our awareness of how much power simple everyday activities really use.
have you thought about how the amount of power used is going ot be displayed to the user? in units? or colours?
luke.
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