Comments on Green Lifestyle Consulting: First Days with our TED-5000 Home Energy Monitor

It all starts at home. If every home conserves ene...

2011-03-24T21:53:19.108-04:00

It all starts at home. If every home conserves energy, then we can prevent natural calamities.

Want more detail then just overall use - for insta...

2010-11-08T09:13:22.064-05:00

Want more detail then just overall use - for instance, want to find out the big energy hogs in your house? Here's one product that I have in my home that really tells you all those details: www.powerhousedynamics.com

I think solar is great. I am saving to buy a home...

2010-03-23T07:37:52.720-04:00

I think solar is great. I am saving to buy a home, but my neighbor did solar panels and he cut his electric bill to $0. They look really cool on the roof too. He went to http://freecleansolar.com to get started.

Thanks for the comments Tom, I wonder who sells t...

2010-03-01T16:40:21.881-05:00

Thanks for the comments Tom,

I wonder who sells the power line filters they suggest and if they should include one standard in the box. Any idea of price?

Since you sell the various TED-5000 do you know if the solar and wind one does DC or AC power monitoring?

Does the Google Power Meter start showing comparisons to other people after more data is collected?

Thanks,
Jon

Jon -- Great post! The TED 5000 is an amazing pr...

2010-03-01T11:36:43.017-05:00

Jon --

Great post! The TED 5000 is an amazing product, overall, but not without its issues. My company has been selling it (sort of ... manufacturer had a rather massive back order that is only now getting fulfilled). We're bracing for an onslaught of technical support questions :-)

The line noise issue is very common and kind of tricky to sort out. They almost encourage you to install the gateway next to the router by providing a 3 foot Ethernet cable; but this will almost always not work (and worse, it will work for just long enough to make you think everything's fine).

I tried connecting over SSL (https) to my TED after configuring my network to let in outside traffic and forwarding traffic on the ssl port to the router. But, as you say, it is terribly slow -- and at least when I tried it, there was no authentication (username/password) so it's kind of pointless to use SSL to secure nothing :-|

We are working on some installation videos, FAQs and other resources at EnergyCircle.com (my company), and I have also posted some more technical stuff on my personal blog at http://fivepercent.us/2009/08/22/ted-5000-installation-notes-and-observations/.

Once you get the product up an running, it's pretty good (and Google PowerMeter starts getting cooler once it has a little history).

What's amazing is that almost everyone writing about the product reports some sort of revelation about electricity use. What I have been surprised at is that it doesn't get "old" -- I have been monitoring electricity for several years (with the Blueline monitor before) and still am finding things that are soaking up electricity needlessly.