Comments on: Black and Decker Power Monitor

By: Business electricity

Business electricity — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 09:46:00 +0000

Lots of tips in here; a great refresh even for the seasoned entrepreneur or small business. And its free!! Thanks Becky.

By: NoloComprende

NoloComprende — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 14:34:01 +0000

When I read this B&D power usage was detected by infrared (reading the speed of the spinning wheel?), I thought, it in no way affects the meter so why would PPL care? If it used electromagnetic induction then there might be an argument against such a device as it could, maybe, contaminate the speed of the wheel, in effect, changing usage records. But Infrared? I see nothing sinister with this device. I do have a handheld Wattmeter gotten a Lowe’s you plug between a device and the receptacle which shows the devices Power draw. Informative is an understatemnt. Some things draw almost as much in Standby as they do ON. Problem is, Cannot measure 220V appliances.

By: NoloComprende

NoloComprende — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 14:24:40 +0000

I wasn’t aware of this device until, in a recent electric bill, the power company (PPL Pennsylvania) warned these devices are NOT permitted ion the external meter the outside transmitter attaches to. That had me running to Google search to figure out what the fuss is about? So, why are such devices “illegal” (at least by PPL)?

By: matt

matt — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 18:06:23 +0000

I also was reading the comments above.To Dave,if the 8×60 watt bulbs are run from the same hot side of an electrical panel you would get a power factor of 2.Service meters are designed to multiply the highest line current of one of the two hot lines by two.For example,if one side of the electrical panel draws 10 amps and the other side draws 20 amps.The meter would read 20 amps x 2 x240 volts=9600w=9.6 Kwh.It pays to have a balanced load.All appliances should be 240 volts but power companies would be losing out on free money.

By: Darren

Darren — Thu, 06 May 2010 02:22:52 +0000

I have been reading the comments above, and thought I should through in my 2 cents. I have been running this for about a month, and so far, I am nothing but pleased! I can tare the current power consumption, walk into a room and turn on my heater, and in 30 seconds or less, see the exact power consumption appear on my monitor.

with regards to David’s comments, he will never see .48 watts as the meter only reads factors of 100W, or 0.1 Watts. in the case where he has 8 x 60 watt bulbs, *assuming he tared the monitor before turning on the lights, he will likely see .5 on the meter within approx 30 seconds.

The manual clearly states to enter the correct power factor. If you see that your consumption is always off by a factor of 2, this is probably the problem.

Check out this link that I found tonight. I was wondering why mine goes into SLEEP so often, even though I’m within the 60′ range. Turns out that because of my cooler nights (east coast, Canada), my alkaline batts are likely getting low. Moving the montior closer to the sensor got it back up and running. I’ll be picking up some L-ion batts tomorrow.

By: James

James — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 16:23:02 +0000

I got one of these monitors recently, and I’ve been testing it for a few days. Comments:
Installation on my mechanical-dial type meter wasn’t that easy – the sensor arm is too short to reach the center of the dial, and it can’t be pushed down far enough to touch the glass. I did eventually get it to work by tilting the clamp-on sensor a bit. However, it doesn’t seem to read very well at low power – I think it’s missing the first 200 watts or so of power use. Below 200 watts it reads 0. Above 200 watts it seems to read additional power use accurately (i.e., if I add 800 watts, it shows 800 watts higher). This may be because the meter dial simply turns too slowly at low power for the 30-second update cycle of the power monitor. I’ll have to run for a longer time to see how accurate the accumulated monthly total is. It does also generate some 2.4 GHz radio interference.

By: David, Electrical Engineer

David, Electrical Engineer — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 22:09:35 +0000

I’ve tested the accuracy of this product and it is horrible. It could be off by up to a factor of 1.5 to 2 (the Power Factor/ Kh setting does not help). With this level of inaccuracy, the product is useless. To test the accuracy on your own, measure power consumption before and after turning on a room full of light of know wattage. For example, for a room with 8 recessed lights of 60 Watts each, consumption should increase by 8×60 Watts or 480 Watts or 0.48 KWatts. If your B&D power meter display does not increase by that amount, the monitor is not accurate. I’ve concluded that the product does not work on many of the types of electrical meters it is advertised to work on. Quite a scam if a lot people are relying on the accuracy.

By: C.M.Sanger

C.M.Sanger — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 04:42:10 +0000

This is a great product, but does have limitations. Check the manufacturer of your Hydro Meter as I have probably spent upwards of an hour outside in freezing weather wondering what I was doing wrong with the installation outside on the meter itself. It does NOT work with Landis-Gyr Meters. The name is printed on the faceplate of the meter.
I was disappointed that I will not be able to use this Powermeter, I do think it’s a great idea and even if not quite accurate, you should be able to get a pretty good idea what your various devices are doing, especially with their Tare function….too bad I will miss out on this one…back to the store is where it will have to go.

By: Aaron Stevens

Aaron Stevens — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 03:36:21 +0000

If the power is off by a factor of 2 I would check on the meter to see what Kh value it is using. For example my meter is a 7.2Kh (typical) so if it were set to 3.6 on the monitor this would cause the reading to be off by a factor of 2.

By: David, Electrical Engineer

David, Electrical Engineer — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 01:11:13 +0000

Has anyone tested the accuracy of the meter? I spent a few hours doing so and found that it could be off by up to a factor of two. This is unacceptable for such a device. What this means is that the power displayed on the hand-held unit does not match what is being measured and recorded on the Power Company meter (and actually being used by the home owner). There may be a way to circumvent this problem by using an artificial Power Factor to rescale the measurement, but it would require a lot of patience determining what that artificial Power Factor. I’ll spend a few more hours evaluating the accuracy, but it seems to me the device is useless if it could be off by up to factor of two. Anyone else have comments?

By: New Toy « Red Herrings

New Toy « Red Herrings — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 19:05:25 +0000

[...] testfreaks.com [...]

By: Gerry

Gerry — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 16:42:38 +0000

My sister has one of these on her house and her biggest complaint is that it goes through batteries
pretty fast. Why doesn’t it have an AC adapter?

By: didier

didier — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 14:39:30 +0000

“is it possible to program the unit , to calculate by day the first 30kwh at one price, and the rest of kwh used at an other price(usually higher), and have the unit remake the calculation for each day?”

By: Wilbour in Ottawa

Wilbour in Ottawa — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 19:16:26 +0000

We have had the unit running for almost a month now and it has been quite usefull in detecting the energy hogs in our house. Our old stereo receiver was over a kilo-watt/hour…yikes! The cold snap is real hard on the batteries though, even with the recomended lithium AA’s. When the batteries get low the unit constantly goes to “SLEEP”. As the weather gets warmer they should last longer.

By: Suzanne

Suzanne — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 20:09:30 +0000

Will this unit help solve the issue we are having that our Summer homes electricity is 2 times the amount per year than our year round home that has Air Condintioning. We believe that the meter is reading incorrectly and we need to try and figure out how to determine this. I think the only way is to determine the about of Electricity each appliance is using. Will this unit help?