Boston Gal's Open Wallet

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Sunday, July 01, 2007

The PowerCost Monitor is up and running

I successfully installed the PowerCost Monitor today at my house. The instructional DVD was easy to watch and gave fairly clear instructions. The hardest part was fiddling with the sensor which attaches to your electric meter. My meter has some large plantings in front of it, so standing on the plant while trying to align the sensor arm and tighten the bracket screw took some time and creative cursing from me before everything was positioned correctly.

The delay time between syncing the handheld monitor (pictured) and the sensor also lead to some confusion on my part. It felt like forever before I could get the two pieces successfully communicating with each other. If you took advantage of the NSTAR promotion (the $29.95 deal ended June 30) and have one of these coming to your home, be prepared to spend some time fiddling with the unit to get it set-up properly. It took me about 1.5 hours to get this working.

The PowerCost Monitor displays the electrical usage in Killowatt Hours and in Dollars per Hour. You can see the two views here.

Once it is all set-up and working properly the real fun begins. I have been walking around my house turning on lights and appliances to watch the numbers on the monitor change. When I ran my hair dryer the Dollar per Hour jumped from $0.05 to $0.22. Right now with my tenant home downstairs and me upstairs the monitor is reading $0.07. It is a beautiful day and just 74 F outside with a nice breeze, yet I am running a couple of fans in the house. I just shut them off and the monitor is reading $0.06. The company that makes the PowerCost Monitor (Blueline Innovations) states that just by monitoring your daily usage you should save up to 20% on your electric bills. I will see if that is true over the next couple of months.

UPDATE: Reader Josh has been kind enough to point out that the NSTAR offer has now been extended to July 31st. The PowerCost Monitor retails for $135.00. If you are a Massachusetts NSTAR customer you can purchase the monitor for the dicounted price of $29.95 (an almost 75% savings!). You need an NSTAR account number to get the discounted price.

Labels: Boston Bargains, Saving Energy

posted by Boston Gal @ 2:56 PM * *

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11 Comments:

At 2:11 AM, July 02, 2007, Jennifer said…

That is so cool! I've never heard of that before. I might give it a try as I am trying soo hard to save money and get out of debt too!
At 5:37 PM, July 02, 2007, carolyncha said…

Just checked and NSTAR offer still works--retail price is $135 so this is a GREAT deal---all you have to do is give them your account number.
At 11:22 PM, July 02, 2007, Boston Gal said…

Hi Carolyncha,

Good to know the deal still seems to be working. The NSTAR website states the deal ends on June 30th - but maybe they have a deal with blueline innovations for a certain amount of discounted units and that threshold had not been met by June 30th.
At 8:06 AM, July 03, 2007, Josh Hughes said…

It seems the NStar offer is still open, you can still order the PowerCost Monitor for $29.95 at http://save-electricity.ca/nstar.html . These units do not seem to be old/discontinued units, just rather that NStar is absorbing some of the cost to promote energy efficiency among its customers.
At 8:18 AM, July 03, 2007, Boston Gal said…

Hi Josh,

Yes, I said discounted units (not discontinued units)! I also think NSTAR is absorbing a portion of the retail price - as Carolyncha pointed out almost 75% of that retail price is being paid by NSTAR - a very good deal! :)
At 10:01 AM, July 03, 2007, Josh Hughes said…

Hi Boston Gal,

Sorry about about, I read the post in a rush. I was interested enough though to call the phone # on the order page. Apparently the offer has been extended to July 31!! Good news for me! and all those others interested.
At 10:18 AM, July 03, 2007, Boston Gal said…

Thanks for the update Josh! That is great news. I will update my post with the new info.

I highly recommend Massachusetts NSTAR customers take advantage of this deal if they can. I am quickly becoming fascinated by my PowerCost Monitor. When the numbers jump I walk around my house to see what is triggering the increase. When the fridge compressor turns on my $ usage jumps by about $0.04. Toasting a bagel this morning saw that $ usage jump by $0.20!

So far my lowest number is $0.04. I would love to work on getting that baseline charge down to $0.00 - that may not be possible since I have a number of plugin appliances with clocks on them which are always pulling some power.
At 2:59 PM, July 03, 2007, Josh Hughes said…

Hey guys, just an update, when ordering my powercost monitor under the NStar Program, I noticed that there is also an offer for National Grid customers, they can get it for even cheaper, $9.99. I wish NStar had that promo on!
At 3:42 PM, July 03, 2007, Boston Gal said…

Hi Josh,

Interesting info about the NationalGrid offer. I wonder if they have just opened it up to more customers? Last month I had some NationalGrid customers email me to say when they entered their account numbers they got a message back about needing a residential account (they had residential accounts). When they called NationalGrid they were informed the offer was open to just a select few NationalGrid customers as part of a pilot program.

NSTAR opened the offer to all customers.
At 3:18 PM, July 06, 2007, Anonymous said…

Is there a way I can get one too? I am in Georgia and unfortunately my energy company doesn't even know about this product!

Thanks
At 3:41 PM, July 06, 2007, Boston Gal said…

Hi Anonymous from Georgia,

You can get one by paying the retail price of $135.00 at http://save-electricity.ca. The discounted price is only available to Massachusetts NSTAR customers (and reportedly a select few Massachusetts NationalGrid customers) and even then for a limited time only - until July 31, 2007.

Your best bet is to write your local utility company and ask them to sponsor this type of program in your home state.