Hi,

Does anyone use one of those energy monitors that measures how much
electricity you use? If you've seen my other thread about heating hot
water on economy seven, you'll know I'm wondering whether to switch
from economy seven.

I thought an energy monitor might be useful to let me see how much we
use in the day vs. at night. Am I right to think they are just an AC
clamp meter that fits on the meter tail and transmits to an LCD?

I had a read of the owl web site, the make I had found (please feel
free to recommend others). Although this has a USB module, as far as I
can see, it only sends real-time information, so to monitor my usage
24/7, I would need to leave my computer on 24/7. That kind of defeats
the purpose of saving energy if I have to turn something on to measure
what I am using!

Though you can view usage on the LCD, I think a computer link is the
best way to view the data. Do you agree? Is there anything on the
market which records usage and then uploads it to your computer when
convenient?

If not, is it worth buying an AC clamp meter with USB output and using
that to measure my usage as and when I want to? Wouldn't it be more
versatile and allow me to do other jobs with it? I suppose the only
disadvantage to that is that it is not wireless so the PC would have
to be next to it.

TIA