Picked a couple of these “Ecowatt” devices up while in Tokyo, from Bic Camera. They monitor power consumption of whatever you’ve plugged into it. Here I had my MacBook Pro plugged in and running (no sleep) for about 24 hours. The device simply runs through four measurements — two I have no idea about because the symbols are in Kanji, and then two more that are kilowatt hours of consumption and estimated CO2 that would be exhausted from, presumably, a power plant that produced CO2 gas.
There’s lots of work to be done around this sort of idea, first of all a more compelling UI. Maybe even the draconian edition that starts to dim your display or attenuate your Internet as you run past your daily quota of energy.
Hi! Do any US companies make these? If not, do you have links for them? I’d love it if more of our mobile devices would tell us how much energy we are actually consuming each day. bzzzzzzrp
Yup, they do. Not this one in particular, but similar. I haven’t found one with CO2 data, but this one has most of the other things and it’s the style that just plugs into an outlet and allows you to plug “something” into it.
The weirdly named P3 International P4460 Kill-A-Watt electricity usage monitor is interesting. There are a bunch of devices very similar around, with these LCD displays of numbers. Some folks have gone to the “ambient color blasting” device, like Wattson, which monitors the entire home, or everything from the power coming into a place from the power station. If you’re into over-engineering, this guy has instructions on carefully building your own DIY home electricity usage monitoring thing, very carefully, when you have a few free weekends.