Watt U Use is a free software utility that provides you with a unique functionality - the chance to know exactly how much energy each of your electrical appliances is consuming, how much they cost you, and which of them is the most power consuming. Thanks to Watt U Use, you will be able to keep an accurate control of your energy consumption, whether you are a home or an office user.
The program´s interface, however, is not very friendly, and it may take a while until you come up to operate it properly. Its main panel consists of a grid, where you can insert one row for each one of your electrical appliances. Every row contains the appliance name, its voltage, wattage and amperage, its KWH (Kilowatt per hour) consumption, the cost per hour, the number of hours the appliance is used per day, and its total per day cost. Once you have entered several rows, you can sort them by appliance name (alphabetical), voltage, wattage or amperage.
What U Use bases its calculations on a well-known equation of the electricity field - wattage equals voltage by amperage. Thus, you are only allowed to input the base data - voltage, amperage and the daily usage in hours - and all the other fields are calculated by the program. Besides, you can also provide the KWH charge rate and, optionally, other daily charges. This information is common for all the appliances you register, and helps Watt U Use to calculate the hourly and daily costs. Unfortunately, this is not an automatic process, as you have to press the "Update" button for these calculations to take place. This ends up being not very user-friendly, especially when you need to repeat the process several times and for several electric appliances.
You can also make use of navigation buttons to move around the appliances grid - these are First, Last, Next, Previous, Insert item, Delete item, Edit item, and Save item. Once again, it is necessary to press the "Edit item" button every time you need to change any of the records. This should be automatic, and the program should go into edit mode as soon as you type over a previously existing field.
Finally, the program also allows you to input additional information for special cases - a different charge for the first KWH, a KWH charge rate, and an optional daily discount. It displays statistics for the electric appliances you registered, including the total cost per hour and per day, the KWH usage per day, the least and the most expensive appliances per hour, and your monthly, quarterly, and yearly total costs of your energy consumption. All that information updates as you input new appliances and press the "Update" button. It also comes with a built-in calculator, similar to the one provided by Microsoft Windows.
Unfortunately, the program manages only one database, and every time you close and re-open it you will be shown all your electrical appliances, complete with the changes you made the last time you used the program. That would be fabulous if only this program would allow you to save and/or open files, which would let you manage several energy consumption profiles (for example, one for your home and one for your company). This detracts a lot from the functionality of the program.
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