Best electricity usage monitor in the UK

What is the best electricity usage monitor? This gadget is designed to show the number of kWh a device or appliance is drawing. A good monitor should have more than one function, reliable sensors and should synchronize with other appliances.

How Electricity Usage Monitors Differ

Electricity usage monitors differ by maximum power, input power, amperage capacity, and the size. Some models can not only monitor power usage but also analyze the data and estimate costs. Electricity usage monitors can be handheld or plug-in units.

• Handheld electricity meters are equipped with a digital display and sensors which need to be clipped to the power cable. Although handheld monitors are more convenient in use, they are less accurate, especially when it comes to small energy consumption.

• Plug-in monitors are installed directly into the wall to measure energy used by home appliances.

Best Electricity Usage Monitor

A shining example of a modern, easy-to-use electricity usage monitor is the Aeotec Home Energy Meter. Founded in Silicon Valley in 2006, Aeotec is the leading creator of quality automation solutions and was the first manufacturer to certify and release devices which use 700 series Z-Wave technology.

While many other electricity usage monitors need to be installed in hard-to-reach places or outside the house, this model is mounted right beside your home’s existing meter. The device offers 99% accuracy and optimized wireless connectivity to cover greater distances of up to 100 meters. It measures electricity usage in both kilowatt-hours and watts and detects up to 60 amps at once.

What we particularly like about this product is that it is a smart meter that can record the data in real-time. The unit is designed to connect with a 240 volt, EU standard electrical system.

Testing & Customers Reviews

Here are the reviews from YouTube bloggers who tested the electricity usage monitor and have found them effective and worth buying.

Byte My Bits : "Today's video let me get into this - it's my circuit breaker box. I'm going to be monitoring my power, i want to actually see what i'm using to better understand what i'm about to do.

So, i got this in the mail this is a Emporia Smart Home Energy Monitor pure sine wave combined inverter and a charger. And this thing is freaking huge! But this thing has a 6000 watt inverter, it does have two phase. I really doubt it's going to run anything super big like an air conditioning unit or anything like that. But what it made me realize is that i realistically have no legitimate idea of what i consume in my house and, furthermore, i don't know what different things in my house consume, like let's say over a night.

So, basically this is the smart device and these are the accessories. These are the hookups. This thing is supposed to be super easy to install. The only thing, that i saw online, was that these cables are super long and it's kind of turns into a nest like a rat's nest on the inside. But just if you're doing this at home be really careful and ideally i should, you know, turn off the power. I mean i totally turned off the power.

This device can monitor up to 16 different circuits and this is going to be the wi-fi hookup has this little wi-fi antenna. Basically, this runs off 2.4 gigs.

So, i don't look at my bill. It doesn't mean anything to me, but now i know the solar inverter that i have that i installed with this sub panel is a 6000 watt solar inverter it can peak up to like 12 for like 20 seconds if something kicks on. But i got this because i wanted to know how far the 6000 watt inverter would go and based off of everything that i'm seeing here, if the power goes down i could probably run pretty decent with some powers, if i turn off non-essential stuff, like power down the servers and computers.

So, installing the Emporia smart home energy monitor did help give me a baseline. Now i know where my numbers are i know what i use. And i could look, let's say, next summer, and say "Oh, wow" and the peak of the heat of the day this is what i use let's say 8 or 9000 watts or from cooking dinner, which i never cooked dinner, but if i did i could say wow the electric stove uses a lot of power it also helps me prep for just in case power goes down."

bigclivedotcom: "This is one of these power analyzers that you plug into a socket you plug your appliance enter and it monitors how much power it takes, it records peak power and it records the overall consumption during see a day, or a multiple of days, or whatever you want. And you can actually program the cost enter by, if I reset this to scratch, you can program the Costin, by holding the cost button for a few seconds and that starts flashing, you press function to step through digits and in this case the local power cost is 17 pence a unit. So, you can scroll long to put that in and then press Cost again and I'll give you an actual cost of the running costs of your appliance. It's a very useful device.

It can turn the display off when it's not needed just to save power, but there we go it's actually really well made it's accurate and it's quite well built and it works well."