Usually it isn’t that simple. The bill is complicated by a change in the seasons, new appliances or computers or changes in energy usage patterns. There are all sorts of reasons why it might not be what you expect. It might turn out that you were using the electric oven more this month, or you spent more evenings out of town with everything turned off.

The obvious next step is to spend hours outside, staring at your power meter and determining how much it has changed since the last time you looked. With Gridspy you can save yourself the time and hassle. We can your usage into separate channels and view the results on-line. Configure one channel to cover your lighting, another for heating and yet another for hot water.

By narrowing down which particular parts of your house consume energy and when, Gridspy helps you concentrate on the real power hogs. If you lower the thermostat on the water heating, the measurements on that channel will clearly show a saving. Put the appliances in your house on their own channel and hunt down those parasitic loads like cellphone chargers or the TV on standby.

With Gridspy, when you decide to shut down those computers at night you have real numbers to back up your efforts. Gridspy tells you exactly how much power the computers were using before, so you just study the graphs to see the dip in usage overnight. Hey presto! You’ve just saved power and cut your power bill. Best of all, you know exactly how much you saved - you can clearly see if that extra effort was worth it. It becomes possible to focus your efforts on those areas that have most effect on your power bill.

Most homes have two key power hogs : hot water and space heating. With Gridspy, you quickly get a clear picture of how much money you are spending on each. There are great power saving alternatives such as solar hot water systems and heat pumps. Once you know what you are spending on hot water, you can calculate how long it will take for the solar hot water investment to pay for itself. If you lead the rural life, you might even install a wet-back around your fireplace so you can heat water by simply lighting a fire. At the barrier house, we have a solar hot water system with a wet-back for the inevitable cloudy day.

In the office, power usage can be slashed by reducing Air Conditioning load, installing smart lighting and turning computers of while not in use. The challenge lies in backing these decisions up with hard data to get buy-in throughout the organisation. Gridspy can give you the data you need, and make power saving fun and interesting. When every single staff member can see the live data feed for their lights and plugs, they understand the impact of turning off the lights they don’t need and leaving computers off overnight.

When the time comes to renovate or build anew choosing the right building materials and methods will lower the lifetime costs of the new building. The New Zealand research consortium Beacon Pathway is currently performing extensive research into the means of building environmentally friendly houses. Beacon understands the importance of constant measurement to prove the performance of their designs, but collecting that much data without Gridspy is not easy.

Could you like to cut the power bills in your business? Gridspy can help you determine exactly how, and help to motivate your colleagues to take the necessary steps.