Grahame Peck ’s new centameter ‘makes it easier to be careful’ – and to save big money on power bills.
Grahame (pictured) won his centameter in January through a competition on the sustainability.govt.nz website. Since then, his power bill has fallen by more than $50 a month, from $228 to $176.
‘That’s much more than I was expecting. I would have been happy with 10 per cent,’ said Grahame. ‘The best thing about the centameter is the instant feedback covering the house – it’s far easier than checking each room for left-on appliances.’
The unit shows how much power the house is consuming at that point in time, he said. ‘It is very responsive – turn on the jug and it shows in around five seconds. Read-out is provided in money, power or CO2 emissions.’
When he got the unit, Grahame set about establishing how much different items cost to run and finding the lowest-level baseline for the house – in his case, around nine cents an hour.
‘Once I know this, the centameter instantly shows how many extra things are running, so I can go and find the culprit.’
What made the most difference to his power use? ‘Switching off kids’ TVs and computers,’ Grahame said. ‘I have a large house with lots of kids, so consumption is often raised by kids just leaving stuff on.’
ShareThis