Current cost power monitor: Making you green with Envi

At first I was sceptical – how could a manufactured piece of plastic that plugs into my electricity supply actually reduce my carbon footprint? Once I plugged in the Current Cost Envi electricity monitor, however, my mature scepticism mutated into a boyish excitement. In an effort to reduce my energy usage, I had entered into a competition with myself.

While reducing my energy consumption may be a challenge, setting up the Current Cost Envi certainly wasn’t. It’s a simple two-step procedure: connect the white monitoring device to a plug socket, then clamp the black box around your electricity metre’s input cable. The monitoring device will then display how many watts you are using.

If you don’t know anything about your electric metre, don’t worry. Just clamp the black box around everything until the monitor starts showing numbers.

The idea behind the system is that by actually seeing your electricity usage, you’ll be better suited to judge how much you are using. If you’ve left something on, the increased wattage will clearly show you.

The device also displays more than just your current usage. It calculates your cost per month, which can be changed depending on your tariff as well as displaying the time and the room temperature. It also displays your total electricity consumption for the day, over the last seven days, over the last 30 days and a breakdown of your night, day and evening usage.

For those who are extremely interested in monitoring their electricity habits, the device also has an Ethernet port for plugging into your computer. You’ll need to purchase the USB-to-Ethernet cable separately, however.

When you do hook it up to your PC, you can connect it to Google’s Power Meter software and view your past electricity usage from wherever you are in the world.

Unfortunately, the device seemed to have some serious problems in connecting with my Windows 7 computer. It is said to be Windows 7 compatible, but it had comm port issues on my system. It will be a shame if this happens to other people, however, because the ability to see whether your electricity usage is going up or down over time is key to the importance of the monitor.

Even without Google Power, the monitor encourages good habits – and dispels useless ones. For instance, leaving three 60W light bulbs on doubles my typical household electricity usage. Meanwhile, turning off the switch that shows the cooker is turned on will save precisely one watt.

Energy-saving aside, the device itself has a very basic build quality. Obviously, the white finish wasn’t going to be bone china, coated with ivory and dipped in platinum. But it is a lot more plastic than is pleasant.

The problem is that, aesthetically, you’d rather hide it under the sink then proudly display it on the mantelpiece – even if you wanted to parade your green credentials. And by hiding the device, you’d be negating the point of it. It’s about time the energy-saving market looked hotter than the planet it was trying to cool.

Aside from these niggles, the current cost of the Current Cost (£39.95) is a very low for this technology. And a visible authority on what is wasting electricity can only be a good thing for reducing your energy consumption. It also offers tangibility to electricity – the knowledge of how much electricity everything uses.

Perhaps more than anything, however, the beauty of the device lies in the feeling of self-worth that it allows. Every time something switches off and the number of watts-used drops, my face is galvanised into a smile.