diy kyoto fight climate change

There’s a lot of pressure on small businesses to reduce their energy consumption and their impact on the environment these days. This may well push up the costs of many local firms. But the financial health of one friend of the Innovatory, DIY Kyoto in Penn Street, has been boosted by worries about global warming.

DIY Kyoto's list of shareholders is growing steadily, and hardly a month goes by without the business featuring on TV or in the national press.

The product attracting all the attention is called the Wattson, a tool which measures the electrical consumption of household items and helps you to estimate the annual bill for items like your kettle, your cooker or shower. The Wattson reveals startling facts about the huge and secret appetite for electricity of many household appliances.

“We have found that leaving the microwave on, just so you can use the clock, can cost as much as £50 a year,” says director Richard Woods. “The Wattson also shows that many television sets use ten times as much energy as music systems in homes. And it confirms that most items left on standby soak up just as much power as when they are in full use. People don’t know these things, and the device helps families to learn about energy use, and energy waste, while they are together in the home. We want to help households to understand and to reduce the amount of electricity they waste. The investment we have received will get the Wattson into mass production, and we intend to follow it up with new energy saving products for the home.”

The company’s team of three designers – Greta Clarke, Richard Woods, and Jon Sawdon Smith – met after graduating from the Royal College of Art.

It has taken them six years to develop the Wattson, which has two components, a sensor/transmitter and a reader. The sensor is clipped onto the power supply between the meter and the fusebox. It uses electromagnetic induction to measure the energy entering the house, and transmits the data, using wi fi, to the hand held reader anywhere in the house.

When you turn an electrical item on, the Wattson tells you exactly how much extra power you are using and what it costs. To underline its message, heavy electricity use makes the monitor glow red, and normal use blue. Up to date electricity prices can be downloaded to the handset over the internet.

“Many of our customers go round the house with their children, measuring how much leaving TV sets and computers on standby actually costs the household, and how much using the power shower adds to the family’s bills, “ Richard explains. “The data it collects on energy use - for a day, for a year or for a lifetime - can be recorded and stored, to guide changes in the household’s habits and to measure their impact.”

The Wattson was developed with support from the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts (NESTA). DIY Kyoto has also received a business grant and help with its search for investors from the Innovatory on Old Street, through the Gateway to Investment service.

The Independent praised the invention, dubbing it an “ecological tamagotchi” for the family. The Wattson has been featured on Richard and Judy’s breakfast show on Channel Four, and BBC 2’s Working Lunch.

For more information on DIY Kyoto visit www.diykyoto.com