The current edition of The Week shines a light on green gadgets. You know the stuff – clockwork radios, wind-up torches, energy efficient washing machines…
Most interesting of the lot, though, is the Electrisave, a digital monitor that tracks your energy consumption, measures your carbon footprint and could, the manufacturers claim, cut your energy bills by 25%.
In fairness, this last claim is a little difficult to quantify, as the Electrisave doesn’t actually do anything that would reduce the amount of power you consume. Instead, it tells you how much you’re gobbling up in the hope it’ll guilt you into using less (for the sake of your finances as much as anything else).
It’s an interesting gadget, and one I’d be keen to try out, as installation looks laughably simple and the receiver is wireless, so you can see from anywhere in your home what you’re using, allowing you to do a mobile audit. Carry it around your house or flat switching electrical items on and off, and it’s sensitive enough to measure the difference that something as small as extinguishing a 20W bulb makes to your current consumption (pun unintended).
It’s not a bank-breaker at £79 a pop, but it would be greatly improved if there was some way of downloading its measurements, perhaps into a spreadsheet or database, so you can track your use over time, and see how it changes between warmer and colder seasons.
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