(4.5 stars) The PRO ES power analyzer met all the advertising claims and, using a laptop, provides an excellent window in to the power consumption characteristics of household appliances. It is a moderately priced power analyzer that displays the basic power characteristics of whatever you plug into it. I am using it with Windows Vista Home Premium on a Dell Inspiron 1501 laptop, so it should run even better on your Windows XP machine!
I haven't actually used the buttons on the front of the unit; the really cool stuff is found in the Watts UP USB and Watts Up Real Time software. Both applications sample power data at 1 second intervals for the appliance plugged into the PRO ES unit. Each sample is stored in a row of a spreadsheet within the Table tab of the application as it is received. The Graph tab provides a line graph of user-selected power measurements as described in Amazon's product description. Both allow access to the PRO ES's settings (sample rate, $/KWhr, etc.). Both applications stopped sampling after about 30 minutes, but I have not investigated the reason. Both provide good Help files which explain the unit's functions.
The Watts Up USB Data Logger application is available without charge from [....] . Due to Windows Vista Data Execution Prevention, I had to download it on a different computer an sneak it in the back door of my laptop (USB memory stick). What a country!
The optional $70 Watts Up Pro Datalogger application adds timers to the applications so you can take power measurements at a specified time or on a specified schedule. It also adds an alarm function, which can provide visible, audible, and email alert when any of the measured data (amps, volts, watts, etc.) rises above or dips below a specified threshold. There is no manual enclosed, but the Help is good as noted above.
The enclosed manual is brief (two 8.5"x11" pages). Accuracy is described as: "+/- 1.5% + 3 counts. Below 60 watts, amps and power factor accuracy degrades." The half-star deduction was for lack of technical documentation (circuit diagram, device fuse replacement, how calibration is maintained)
It does not measure harmonic distortion, so it will not help you diagnose power quality problems or impacts caused by harmonics introduced by the appliance being tested. It does claim to measure true RMS power without providing details. It also provides apparent power (VA) and power factor, so reactive power (VAR) can be calculated.
Here's some measurements:
"60W" Compact Fluorescent bulb: 12.5 Watts
"100W" Compact Fluorescent bulb: 22.4 Watts
Tivo: 10.5 watts in use, 5.5 watts standby
5-disc DVD carousel: 45 watts in use
32" JVC 1995 TV: 50 watts idle, 75 watts with blue screen, 75-105 watts in use. Power peaks during bright scenes, dips in dark scenes. Speaker volume doesn't make any measureable difference.
Clock radio: 5 watts idle, 7.5 watts listening to FM radio
1500W space heater: 21 watts fan only, 754 watts on Low, 1463 watts on Max.
The data can be stored to a tab-delimited .txt file and imported into Excel using the Text-to-Columns wizard. It can also be copied and pasted directly from either Watts Up application into Excel. The graph can be sent to a printer.
If you have some electrical training and you are curious about the actual power consumuption profile of devices up drawing up to 15A (1800W), this unit and your laptop will make a nice power analyzer. For me, it did everything I wanted with a simple data export function and good presentation. Watts Up? Pro ES AC Power Meter
This product works reasonably well if you want to know how much energy a specific appliance or piece of equipment is using, but pretty useless for trying to monitor any kind of short term power fluctuations. You would think that when they we designing a $175 meter, they could have included a 98¢ clock chip to provide some accurate time stamping on the data samples. Instead it relies on a kind of hinky software patch to address this problem. When you are looking to match this meter's data log with another log, say from a UPS, this software time stamp kludge is just not accurate enough.
So if you just want to know how much your refrigerated is costing you to run or how much juice your TV is drawing when it's turned off this is a good choice. If you want to find out why the UPS connected to your computer switches to batter every couple minutes, forget about it. - Power Monitor'
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