Green Apps to track

As the saying goes – you can’t manage what you can’t measure. Well, starting with these 10 green apps, you can start measuring. Once you know exactly how and what you’re using, you can figure out ways to reduce your usage, make improvements to your home, and change your behavior. More importantly, you’ll be doing something good for the environment – as well as your wallet.

Basic Calculators

This is a great way to start if you literally have no idea how much things cost to run. When you’re in a store and you compare energy ratings across different brands, it doesn’t really mean anything. But finding out that a box fan costs around $5 a month to run, compared to a single-room air conditioner for $45, might change which one you end up buying!

Electric Cost Bill Calculator (Android)

This is a neat and simple calculator to help you figure out how much each of your appliances actually costs to run.

Simply find out how many watts each appliance consumes (normally found on the back of the appliance, but there’s also a list of common items) and then input that along with how many hours a day you use it.

Energy Cost Calculator (iOS)

This is another simple calculator but for iOS. It has a nice interface and it’s simple to see how to input your data. Great for when you’re in a store and need to compare items, or just if you’re curious about how much your new fridge actually costs to run.

Electricity Cost Calculator (Android)

Another basic calculator, but if you like your apps with lots of clear white space, then definitely choose this one.

Calculators for the whole home

My Power Consumption (Android)

A step up from a simple calculator, this app allows you to input and save individual devices from each room in the house, getting a grand total.

This app really excels with reporting. You can compare rooms, compare devices in each room, or even compare similar items against each other. The pie charts let you see at a glance which are your electricity bad guys by.

EvoEnergy – Electricity Cost Calculator Free (Android & iOS)

In the same vein is EvoEnergy, providing you with a space to enter in all of your rooms, appliances, and hours of use, and then working out your daily, weekly, monthly and yearly costs.

EvoEnergy’s reporting isn’t as adaptable and fun as My Power Consumption, but it does claim that it has no spyware, spam or phishing.

Electricity Consumption (Android)

Now available in English (originally released only in Greek) this is another of the home electricity calculators. It has a really nice user interface, allowing you to add multiple identical items and drop downs for wattage use.

Energy Consumption Analyzer (Android)

Rather than looking at individual devices, this calculator compares your total usage across gas, electricity and water. You can update the information when you like and the app normalizes it across the time period, giving you an idea of how much you’re using each day, month or year.

The creator has obviously thought through the different methods that people use, with options for prepaid meters (which run backwards) and virtual meters and it also has sync options.

It’s a lot less granular than some of the above apps, but it’s a great simple option to simply understand your usage.

Apps with hardware

Sense Home Energy Monitor (Android & iOS)

If you have a Sense home energy monitor or Wiser Energy monitor installed in the electrical panel of your home, you can see real time information about your usage using the Android or iOS app. This is handy if you need to double check if you left the aircon on when you left for the day!

Using machine learning, Sense figures out how much each device is using and when. The reviews on the AI part aren’t brilliant, but as with all machine learning, it will get better over time.

Neurio

The Neurio Home App connects with the Neurio Sensor to capture your energy usage data. Because it’s tracking your daily usage, you’ll know exactly what your bill is going to be before it arrives. It can help you to identify which devices are using the most energy and because data is real time you can see if you accidentally left anything on, or if anything is consuming energy when you’re not at home.

Efergy

Efergy offers smart sockets that you can plug directly into each outlet. You can then control the smart socket using the Efergy app, Google Home and Alexa. It also has a range of wireless monitoring devices that you can use to test each appliance in your home, although this doesn’t yet work via the app.