Energy Monitoring for Potential Cost Saving in a Typical South African Household

Abstract

Reducing energy demand in residential sector is an important problem worldwide. This study focuses on the awareness of residents to energy conservation and on the potential of reducing energy demand through energy-saving activities. The knowledge about demand variation in households is fairly limited in South Africa as well as the use of various tools used to analyze the demand. Due to the frequent increase of energy cost at a significant rate, many consumers are looking for ways to reduce the monthly electricity bill. The aim of the project is to identify possible areas where the consumer could reduce consumption in order to reduce the monthly bills. To achieve this, a real-time energy monitoring device “Efergy E2” was installed in the distribution board of a residential home. Among other benefits, the hourly load data analysis can provide the detailed characteristics of load demand, define the consumption patterns and can help to identify where the consumer could reduce the electricity bill. The analysis of results shows that a huge amount of electrical energy is used during peak billing periods of the day under the TOU tariff. With this information the consumer could make use of demand shifting to help reduce the bill.