Products of interest to Energy Consumption users

Data Loggers

• Soren spotted the ExTech RTH10 ($80 at TEquipment.net) at the California Academy of Science

Shower Heads

• Delta H2O Kinetic 4-jet (RP3684 is 46384?) - Soren finally went to the local Delta dealership with his and ordered two more. :)
• Some comments (and a lower price) - we need more people with lots of hair to comment
• This single-jet model is one third the price at Home Depot. It's noticeably noisier but doesn't drip and can keep you warm in winter with significantly less water than the 4-jet model.  Because I (Soren) use a cut-off valve (need link) to save water while washing, this is my winter shower head (in summer, I throw the switch all the way to off).
• http://www.oxygenics.com/magic.html - to evaluate

Programmable Thermostats

• the Internet-accessible ecobee
• Jonah (and Consumer Reports) have had good results with the Lux TX9000TS.

Refrigerators

• Bottom Freezers models are best: one Sun Frost has a top-mounted compressor and consumes < 300 kWh/year
• Some side-by-models are almost as good.

Watt Meters

(most watt meter links on on energyconsumption.org proper)

• Cost Controller power strip w/built in watt meter (8-1800 watts?) for $100 :P
• Chroma 66200, for Energy Star testing
• BrulTech EML 2020 can monitor two 120v loads or a single 240 load!

Whole House Meters

• TED 5000 Series whole-house meter with developer API, Google PowerMeter support, wireless (WiFi) display, and the ability to deal with (add or subtract??) on-site power sources (e.g. home solar or wind).
• EnergyCircle and Mapawatt both report problems with the TED 
• BrulTech EML 2020-H uses ZigBee or USB to transmit your entire home's energy consumption to your PC
• EnergyCircle overview including good reviews & experiences
• missing the excellent (battery-operated, data logging) efergy e2 
• PowerMeterStore overview doest offer much guidance and includes obsolete meters
• missing Owl, Wattvision (which comes pre-configured for your meter & WiFi network!)
• mapawatt discusses per-circuit monitors and intelligent feedback mechanisms 
• eMonitor does per-circuit monitoring
• see Projects for DIY per-house, per-circuit, per-plug monitoring ideas

Panel Meters

• Conserv's ELF3234 Panel Meter (and related) display electrical measurements near your circuit breakers. 

Lighting

Home Appliances

• Hot Water (background)
• HVAC
• Jonah has had a good experience with his Black and Decker TLD100 (thermal leak detector)
• woot! (says Soren :)

PC Components

networking

• D-Link's Green Ethernet (e.g. 8 port Gb switch) comes with an Energy Star power supply and lots of smart technology to use minimal power (even figuring out the length of the cable, etc).

virtualization

• http://ncomputing.com/ sells anti-KVMs to let multiple users share a single PC

Low Power Server 

• Jonah owns a DreamPlug server, which is a "Plug Computer", 1.2GHz CPU, 512 MB RAM, dual ethernet, wifi, usb, and SD card slot.  He added a 16 GB SD card to augment the 4GB internal storage.  It runs debian 5.  Average power draw for my unit: 4.9 watts!  Jonah recommended.  http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com

Wind Power

• See pacwind.net for (last I checked) a 500-watt, 48" vertical axis residential wind turbine for under $3000, among other goodies.

Alert Schemes

• Niagra Conservation has a clever $2 Air Filter Whistle that reminds you when it is time to replace your furnaces filter.  As simple a as a tea kettle, brilliant!

Human-powered generators

• The Yo Gen claims to produce 5W of output from a device which is essentially a flywheel at the end of a yo-yo string.

Motion Sensing Products

• Sensor Plug (http://www.sensorplug.com/) - Cheap (I bought for $15 each).

Products to Find

• Remote-switched power strip: You mount a mechanical switch by the door so that when you go home at night, you can cut power to everything your office. Vice versa on the way out in the morning.  Our Switches page mentions this gangly option. There are fancy "whole house power-off" buttons, but something that works for a single room would be cool and consume no power itself. Similar products include motion-sensing power strips and Christmas Tree light switches with the switch at the end of a cord ... perhaps someone makes a three-prong version of such?

• soft-off, soft-on sensor switch (I think these exist): motion-sensing power switches generally default to automatic mode ... but if you want to force them on or off, you press the appropriate button but it only stays in that state as long as it normally would. Mostly I want this so I can turn off lights when I leave rooms with sensors, but the "on" button might be handy to make sure a whole room lights up.

Sources

• Positive Energy sells watt meters, spin-dryers, caulks & sealants, etc.
• Energy Federation is one of the older (in Soren's experience) sites for energy efficiency "stuff" from watt meters to electrical outlet insulation to shower heads.
• EnergyCircle reviews and sells lots of good products
• MetaEfficient has a number of relevant reviews (batteries, etc) 
• http://Tequiment.net has good-looking deals on lots of test equipment (e.g. $2k thermal imager :)

Lists

• gizmodo