We are glad to invite Howard, who lives in Sai Kung, to have a sharing with us his SEE Mate experience in using the SEE App.
Sai Kung - Howard | SEE Mate Sharing
Hello everyone, I am Howard, and living in a village house in Sai Kung. In the past year, I have been invited to a study regarding the electricity usage of village houses held by the Asian Energy Studies Centre of Hong Kong Baptist University. The centre installed a smart sensor in my house for the measurement of housing electricity usage in daily life. I have one more resident in my house, through the data, I hope the centre could obtain relevant information that could help in finding out the average or typical electricity usage of residents in Sai Kung. Well, what did they actually install in my house? Let's take a look, firstly they install a smart sensor in the distribution board of my house. The video shows: this is the smart sensor that has been installed in my house, which measures electricity consumption. As we can see, the light bulb is flashing, indicating that the sensor is operational.
Besides, this smart sensor can be connected to a USB receiver via Wifi as I had mentioned. It is a USB, so it can be plugged into any port providing a power source in the house. Through this Smart Sensor with this USB transmitter, we can connect it to Wifi, and via that, we can check the real-time electricity consumption and its history in the See App of our smartphone at any time.
During my participation of this year, I can control my electricity usage every month after checking the usage in my house via the app. Well, how could we see the electricity usage of every appliance? It is really easy! Through the clear user interface, we can check the real-time electricity usage in the unit of Walt. First, we open the SEE App and turn off the appliance that we want to measure. The app will show a basic usage amount because generally, some appliances need to be continuously operated such as the fridge. So, it will be a basic number shown in the electricity usage, for instance, the basic number is 200 watts, we enter the app and turn on the appliance we want to measure. And then we will observe the number of the electricity usage increased after waiting for a few seconds. If the number increases to 600 watts, it means the electricity usage of the appliance is 400 watts.
I measure the electricity usage of every appliance in common use, thus I can know which appliance I should not use too often such as an exhaust fan, its electricity consumption could be up to 600 watts. I can know the electricity consumption of every appliance. When I note the abnormal electricity usage, I will investigate if the appliance age or need to be replaced.
In the past year, I thank for the support from the team of the study, for example, they provided technical support when I got any problems. I hope they can keep on for more participation from other users and get more data. Also, I hope the message of saving energy could be passed to the residents from other districts in Hong Kong. Thank you!