Learn about Energy Management Systems

Energy management systems monitor and manage energy consumption throughout your whole home. Usually, energy monitors only monitor electricity for selected circuits or appliances. Energy management systems go the extra step and allow you to program circuits and appliances to turn off and on as needed. This helps to decrease power consumption during peak hours and save money on energy bills. These systems can be available as stand-alone systems from your electric utility meter, or a smart meter may be available through your utility.

Energy management starts with monitoring energy consumption using energy monitors. These are available as plug-in monitors (for appliances that can be plugged in), or as circuit monitors installed in the breaker panel of your home. Installation of a circuit-based electricity monitor requires the services of a licensed electrician to work inside the breaker panel.

Whole-home energy management that can allow you to program and turn off each circuit or appliance from a single app is still not readily available as of 2019. You may find you need to get a separate energy monitor and automated switches for a full energy management system.

By showing you how much energy you use, energy management systems can help you reduce your energy consumption. They can show you which circuits and appliances are using the most energy, which are on during peak electricity prices, and which can be rescheduled or turned off to reduce your energy consumption and save you money.

The Web Energy Logger (WEL) is an affordable, DIY solution for energy monitoring, especially for measuring the output of solar energy and heating systems. A unique feature of WEL is the community of users who have posted a map of their WEL servers. You can look up how much solar heat is being generated at people's home solar energy systems across North America.