Efergy Elite Wireless Energy Monitor

It’s difficult to keep track of exactly how much power is used by the various gadgets and devices that populate a modern home, and if you’re not aware of how much energy your major appliances use you could be missing out on a chance to save cash.

The original Efergy meter was a good solution to this problem but the new Elite model improves on its predecessor in terms of usability and performance with a sturdier, more stylish design, a better display and a more intuitive summary of consumption.

Setting up the Efergy Elite was straightforward and involved fitting six AA batteries to the components and clipping the supplied sensor around the live feed cable on your electricity meter, (it supports dual tariff meters) – don’t worry, it’s not a dangerous process. Once this is done, hitting the Link button on the unit synchronises the sensor with the display unit, at which point your home’s consumption levels will be shown. This can be tuned for accuracy by entering cost details along with the current time and date.

The Efergy Elite offers a choice of current electricity usage in kilowatts or the amount being spent per hour in pounds and pence. The biggest improvement over the previous version is its ability to accurately store and retrieve consumption history over time. Users can browse by day, week or month from the time at which it was first set up to highlight times of excessive usage, and a quick view is available on the main display to show both yesterday and today’s average readings.

This is a superb way to keep track of usage over time and adds considerable value to the meter’s primary purpose of reporting current usage. Both the display and corresponding controls were easy to view and operate and the only minor issues we had were that there’s no ability to store energy data remotely (by linking to a computer) and that no batteries were provided.

Overall though, the Elite should be considered a very useful way to monitor a home’s uage and could help make substantial savings over time.