How To Track Power Consumption at Home in Real Time

Since the 9.0-magnitude earthquake hit Tohoku region in Japan, there has been a shortage of electricity throughout Kanto area. Tokyo is of no exception. Many office building lights are switched off and many stations are kept dark to save as much electricity as possible.  TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Co.) is running TV commercials asking each and every person to join forces to save electricity.

Well, apart from from that, there is a product that may help us save even more energy. It’s called the “Energy Literacy Platform” (ELP) projected to be released this summer.  In brief, ELP is a tool that shows users how much electricity are being consumed in your home in real-time.

There’s no way to know how much electricity you’re consuming other than checking your electricity bills.  ELP allows users to see how much energy was consumed when you dry your hair after taking a shower, cook your breakfast or even simple task like heating up your coffee using the microwave. On the ELP website, users can set a maximum electricity capacity (or a maximum financial capacity) for the ELP module. A report would be generated as shown below:

These ELP modules can be placed between various power outlets and home appliances. The ELP receiver sends the power consumption data to the server.  ELP modules allows you to track each household appliance individually, you can even turn off appliances remotely using your smartphone.  All data collected by ELP can be also be monitored on your smartphone and also on the web in real time.

ELP is a Japan-based service by Sassor Inc., which was founded in Sep 30, 2010. Sassor is run by a group of students from Keio University and its website is available in Japanese and in English. You can catch more here.

There’s another exciting product that they’re working on called “Socialacts” which I’m particularly very interested in it. I’ll share more when it’s released 🙂