Has anyone bought an electricity monitor? Any good?

[NotMostPeople]

Our fuel bills are huge. I have three dc's all with chargers for this and that permanently plugged in and a house that's like the Blackpool illuminations, I'm the only person to ever turn a light or appliance off.

I was wondering about buying an electricity monitor, I'm not entirely sure how they work or even if its the right thing, but I was hoping that we'd be able to see how much it's costing us to have everything switched on all the time. Has anyone tried this?

[piemistress]

My mum has one, think she got given it by her energy supplier? We are staying at her house just now inbetween moves and I really like being able to see how much we are using. It's either green, yellow or red. Would recommend!

[PrincessOfChina]

Our supplier is changing us to a Smart Meter next week for free. Maybe give them a call and see if you can sign up. I just know I'll get obsessive!

[jenbird]

We borrowed one from the library for three weeks for free. It was very illuminating!! It was actually really interesting to see the difference it made when we turned different things off and on.

[NotMostPeople]

Wow I didn't know you could do that. What were the things that were most surprising?

[jenbird]

Obviously the big items made a big difference i.e dryer, washing machine etc. The kettle made a surprisingly big difference. Also we have different types of lightbulbs and it was interesting to see the differences between them. Since getting it I have made a conscious effort to turn lights off etc.

[piemistress]

It definitely makes you turn off lights if not in that room. Microwave, oven and electric shower are the biggies in our house

[sleepyhead]

We got one from British Gas. Ds is obsessed with it!

It's not shown me all that much since our electricity consumption took a nose dive when we got gas central heating last year and stopped heating water with an immersion heater, but it's interesting seeing it shoot up when you switch the kettle on etc.

Our background consumption (lights on, TV, laptop, a couple of chargers) seems to be around 3p per hour in the evening. Seems quite cheap to me. We're staying in the green zone anyway so far which is good.