KITCHENER — Auston Gough figures he saved about $50 a month on electricity bills this past winter after he installed devices that measure his hydro usage by the second and relay the information to his tablet.
Gough lives in a two-bedroom apartment above King Street in downtown Kitchener and was spending about $400 for electricity every two months this past winter. His place is heated with electric baseboards and has a dishwasher.
Gough spent $129 for a kit from Eyedro Green Solutions Inc., a new company in the Communitech Hub. He clamped sensors on the main line feeding the electrical panel, and then hooked up a small box that sends detailed information on electricity consumption to his tablet.
Gough used to keep one baseboard heater cranked up high and the other three almost turned off. He quickly learned that doing that was hugely inefficient. He changed the settings so that all the heaters run intermittently.
Gough learned that the four light bulbs in the bathroom used as much hydro as his dishwasher. So he switched to high-efficiency bulbs. He only runs his dishwasher when electricity rates are lower.
“I just made some fairly minor changes and I was using less power, which is great,” Gough said.
The downtown bartender is an early adopter of the technology developed by Eyedro. The company already has customers — residential, institutional and industrial — in 10 countries.
Read the full article Eyedro Keeps Eye on Hydro Usage, by Terry Pender at http://www.therecord.com/news-story/4526526-eyedro-keeps-eye-on-hydro-usage/
$400 is still insane i live in a two bedroom apartment on the main floor of a house and my recent bill says i am using 93,223kw/h and my bill came up to over $900 even tho throughout the week im in school everday and my children are in daycare. I have everything off during the day and yet my usage keeps going up. There is something seriously wrong when ur hydro is more then your rent. Im at a dead end and dont know what to do like i cant afford these kind of bills when im on ontario works and have three children to provide for. Soon this country is going to come to a new depression with the way things are going nowadays.
This is impossible …. do you have your own hydro meter for just your suite????.put an eyedro on main breaker than turn everything off ….looks like you are paying for the whole house hydro not jut yours….If you turn “your” main breaker off and it shuts off things in other part of house you will know for sure you are paying their hydro….
so either an error when houe was wired or stright theft by other suite ..please check it out
Mark