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Loading ...I Cut My Bills With a Voltmeter - Result!
khenry
Just to round off this little mini series, my winter to spring electricity bill was £117.19, this was before two sets of price rises by my provider, EDF.
Over the spring to summer billing period covered by the last two blog entries, my summer bill (which to be fair was going to be lower anyway) still dropped to £41.17 , a saving of £76.02. Due to a dead gas oven which I’ve never replaced, my gas bill is that kind of figure all the time, so I’m really happy that those two bills are balanced. This figure’s also a good achievement compared to their dire warnings about price rises. I say “rip them back off” and stop giving money for nothing to a utility supplier!
In fact, the size of the saving used to be my average summer bill, but to be fair, Antec’s/Seasonic’s Earthwatts power supplies also have to take some of the credit, not just Maplin for selling me the Voltmeter and it’s frightening that both power supplies contributed to savings on the power bill from the day I bought them, without curtailing my PC Usage. Once I modernised my CRT and downgraded my GPU as detailed in the previous post, it all came together.
Thanks to Feathers633 for his feedback and even if you haven’t commented, I hope I’ve shown you that if you need to make some savings on your outgoings for energy (depending on your bill date) you can do it using whatever’s in your house already, but just using it differently.
As a fringe benefit, the planet has been helped along with my pocket. 
UPDATE 27/9/08: My gas bill arrived and not using an electric kettle anymore resulted in a £6.96 increase to £28.41. Measured against the electric savings above, 9% of that major decrease was moved over to gas instead.
A voltmeter measures VOLTS - that stays pretty much constant however much POWER you use.
A wattmeter measures POWER.
You used a WATTMETER to reduce your POWER.
See how easy it is?
Get it right.
Since you’re so happy with the headlines I’ll leave them as they are - have a nice life
I get the feeling TW forgot to take his meds.
Perhaps I used a capacitance meter to check my watts consumption? Then again maybe I used an inductance meter, I don’t care really. The point is that at least some people make the effort to save energy.
A voltmeter can be used to measure power,
in series with a resistor ala V = IR or I = V/R and as im sure your aware my friend, current is a measurement of energy i.e. 1 Amp @ 1V is 1 Joule/Sec (or 1 watt)
Therefore if i use 230V then you multiply the current usage by that, guess what, you have a WATTMETER!!! MAGIC i didnt need to go and buy an expensive (industrially focused) wattmeter after all.
Of course most DVMs (Digital Volt Meters) have the ability to measure current accurately anyway so in reality there is no need to do any of that, or indeed any need for your post TW mmKay.
oh and ive just reread your post… NO VOLTAGE DOES NOT STAY THE SAME NO MATTER HOW MUCH POWER YOU USE.
If i have fixed power supply the likelyhood is that the power line voltage will start to droop if i use excessive power. If the power supply is cheap and not well designed this WILL happen toward the specified upper limit of current draw from the supply. Or in any supply when high demand is almost instantaneously needed (this causes a small droop which is usually rectified quickly).
Large power draw also causes complex functions to appear on the voltage waveform. This includes affects such as increased rippeling due to the power supply being a switch mode, but we’ll not get into that mate, im sure you know all about this as you seem to be an expert.