AlertMe Energy drops prices

The AlertMe Energy monitoring service has recently dropped the price of both its hardware and the monthly subscription. The meter transmitter and network hub kit now costs £49.99 (it was £69.99) and the monthly subscription fee drops by a quid to £1.99. That's a much more sensible price for this handy piece of kit, which I've been trying out for the last few months (I reviewed it for Computeractive late last year).

The company has also launched a free iPhone Energy Map app, with an online version too, that lets you see how well your borough compares in terms of annual energy consumption to the rest of the country.

I've had no problems so far with the hardware or the reporting, although there have been a couple of automatic firmware upgrades. The Google Power Meter tie-in is still probably the best bit of it - every time I visit iGoogle there's an energy consumption chart staring me in the face. This now has the ability to let you set an energy target (mine is a 10% reduction) and monitors how well you're doing. "Not very well" is the answer in my case...