Are energy monitors the key to conservation?

From sph, a story on a proposal in the United Kingdom to distribute energy monitors to most households. These monitors would display current energy use, apparently broken down by individual appliance (though the story doesn't explain the mechanics of that). Monitors are not the same as smart meters, which I discussed previously.


Energy consumption is very nebulous thing to most people and getting hard data like this is essential to helping people understand what activities use the most energy. It's the first step in helping people connect that 3 TVs and 2 computers running all night actually uses a lot of electricity.

However, the one way to improve the meter would be to have it display price information. I'd love to see the meter say, "Your energy use is costing $XX per hour." Of course, since a typical American residential electric rate is around 11 cents/kWh, and Americans use an average of 1.2 kW per hour, it might not phase folks much to see that they're spending 13.2 cents an hour on electricity.

While the impact might be small, another hope for increasing consumer knowledge of electricity use is to create demand shifting. Electric use in most places peaks in late afternoon in summer, when air conditioners are cranked up as people arrive home from work. One of the big keys to reducing emissions from power generation is time-shifting demand so that power consumption is more level. A large proportion of electric generation (as much as 25%) is invested in so-called "peaking plants" that are only turned on a couple times a year during peak demand. If power consumption was more level, these plants would a) not be used and b) may not be built at all.

It's a lot to ask from an energy monitor, but it's a good first step.