For quite a while now, I have been stumped with what kind of equipment to get to measure power consumption. For consumers, I have a Kill-a-watt which is fine for curiosity at home, and maybe watts up pro for a USB device. Extech and Fluke are other pieces of equipment others have used, but nobody gives a huge endoursement.

Keeping my fingers, crossed I think I have found a device that would work well in a Performance Lab environment. Dan Diesso of Smart Works and I sat down to go over his device and how it works.

Smart-Watt keeps a cumulative total of the energy consumed in 0.1 watt-hour increments and retains that reading even in the event of a power failure. Smart-Watt conforms to ANSI Standards for watt-hour meters so you are assured of the same high accuracy standards that public utilities require for their meters. To make reading the meter easy each Smart-Watt is equipped with a unique internal ID and network connection for automated reading. You can daisy-chain multiple Smart-Watt units together and connect them directly to a PC COM port for automated reading or use our Smart-Net Gateway that provides an IP interface to read a group of Smart-Watt units across your local area network or remotely over the internet.

After I've had a chance to use the unit, I'll report on how well it works, and whether it meets the power needs for a performance lab. The accuracy, unique ID, and network connection are what differentiates Smart-Watt vs. other equipment I've seen.