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David Riddle with his energy monitor. DB3859P1

THERE'S an owl on my kitchen table. And it's keeping a watchful eye on everything I do. It landed there a month ago, and there it's sat ever since, blinking quietly from time to time.

I blame my husband. He found it.

Now I can't even switch on the kettle to make a cuppa without it suddenly flashing a reproving series of numbers at me.

It all started when my husband's employers, the National Trust, gave their staff an extra holiday for Leap Year Day.

Instead of toiling in the office on February 29, they were all told to go and out do something to make life greener, do their bit for the planet.

The Owl wireless energy monitor was David's answer. £49.95 on the Internet and it would soon be cutting our electricity usage and - bonus - our bills.

Just five minutes was all it took to set up, clipping its little sensors around the cable between the electricity meter and the consumer unit.

Since then it's been monitoring every single kilowatt we use, telling us how much it's all costing (aargh!) and how much greenhouse gas emission all that electricity being generated makes us responsible for.

Admittedly it uses batteries to do so - but hey, nobody's perfect.

The display unit can be moved from room to room, though frankly, I don't think I want it alongside me while I veg out in front of the Antiques Roadshow on a Sunday evening, so in the kitchen is where it will stay.

It's there to greet me when I stagger blearily downstairs in the morning, switch on the trendy halogen spotlights - 0.53 kilowatts per hour - switch them off again when I see how much they're costing and put the under-worktop strip lights on instead.

It goes bonkers when I make the tea - another two kw/h, the equivalent of a two-bar electric fire - so I think twice about putting the toaster on as well and settle for a banana.

There's always a background level of power being used, of course. That's accounted for by fridges, freezers and anything else electrical that's left on all the time (Note to self: Remember to turn off the TV standby).

And it can be quite unnerving the first time that background reading rises without an appliance being turned on. But relax, it's just a surge of power to those same fridges and freezers as their thermostats kick in.

We all know the washing machine and tumble-dryer - even the most energy-efficient A-rated models - are going to gobble up electricity.

For me, the eye-openers are the little things we barely think about - like the hairdryer (a whopping two kw/h).

At our supplier's current basic price of almost 4.5p per kw, it soon adds up.

The key thing to remember, as my husband patiently points out, is that anything involving a heating element will send the bills rocketing.

Whether the Owl will make a long-term difference to our family's consumption, and hence the environment, it's too soon to say.

But in the meantime I reckon it's given me the perfect excuse to postpone the vacuuming for another day.

12:38pm Thursday 10th April 2008

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