Power by the minute

BY SARA KEDDY

Kings County Register

Knowledge is power and, if you can watch the cost of power add up right in your own house, you can take advantage of it.

Berwick is teaming up with some energy agencies to help town utility customers keep an eye on power usage. Collaring a device onto your home’s meter and giving you a handy digital display unit to carry from room to room - adding up data every 15 minutes, this study will have an effect. “It’s the unecessary power - if you leave a room and leave the light on, you don’t think about the power or see it,” says Katherine Rettallack. “If you can, you will.”

Rettallack is Acadia Management Group’s manager of conservation programs; AMG will run Berwick’s year-long meter study. With funding from the town, Conserve Nova Scotia and, hopefully, Eco-Trust, up to 100 homes will be fitted with new digital meters by November 1 - no more meter checker in your driveway: data is electronically sent off every 15 minutes - and home display panels. One hundred more homes will take part in a six-month comparison, going about their normal activities, before they, too, join the metering system for the rest of the year. “We’re hoping people will get into this, volunteer - and that we have enough!” Rettallack says. “We want people to help - contribute to the environment, and help themselves. there’s everything right about this study.”

The town wants to know, if people have these monitors, will they adjust their energy consumption habits? “It could be quite dramatic - if you have your dryer going, go look at the monitor, turn the dryer off and look again. “It’ll show you the accumulated cost from your last bill - even the last 15 minutes, and you can see it going up. “It’s interesting - maybe scary, but knowledge is power.”

CONTACTS (902)542-5223

info@AMGinc.ca

WEBLINKS

www.town.berwick.ns.ca