Flat energy meter

The same day we were told of our next project I thought of an idea, the idea came from the never ending argument between flatmates as to who is using all the power around the house. To solve this problem and to make an energy monitoring device, my first idea for project one came about. The idea would be to have a device which could measure each room’s power consumption as well as the overall energy use. The device can display either total house usage or individual usage, with the individual room meter there would be no argument as to who has left their electric blanket on all week. Splitting the power bill each month would mean paying for your room plus the common area share, solving the problem of who uses more power. I figured it would be far too hard trying to allocate power usage per person for the kitchen, bathroom, lounge and any common areas. But having a graph which shows energy use as the day progresses and collating that into an average over the month could help to understand who is using how much. For example if I were a night shift worker then my power use would be during the day and others would have theirs at night. But then this still isn’t person specific so would have to still be worked out by the household. The main idea for this device is to prevent people from worrying whether you are using too much power in your room. And giving people to choice to use as much or as little as they want to due to them being the only ones paying for it. Another side to this device would be to make examples of those with excessive power use, having it viewable by the rest of the house and visitors brings in the sense of guilt or competitiveness with others. This in turn would hopefully mean less power consumed.

The monitoring device would still keep records of total house use and other little power usages like hot water and any other appliances or outlets you wish to choose. But the main difference from other devices would be the room management section.