Having friends in Meralco is a boon. For years now, these friends have given our family advice on many things, including the type of appliances to buy so we use electricity efficiently. My friend Alex would even hand out Meralco brochures that give friendly consumer advice on how to save on energy costs. And I remember instances in friends’ houses when Alex would spend time explaining to us the impact of how we use our appliances on our bills.
Being web-addicted connected, I long discovered M.A.C. (Meralco Appliance Calculator) on the Meralco website. In fact, the MAC (I’ve removed the periods just to make it easier as I type this post) has been on their website since 2003. Unfortunately, not many consumers knew about the existence of MAC. And honestly, while I did tinker around with MAC a bit, trying to put in some info on our appliances and usage patterns, I never really got to use it as a real tool for electricity savings.
Till now.
Meralco is relaunching M.A.C. with new and improved features so that it can really become your electricity budget buddy. Let’s meet M.A.C. –
Fig. 1 Portal to MAC |
Fig. 2 Home screen of MAC |
Tabs run across the top (General Appliances, Aircon, Ref, etc.) Clicking on those tabs bring dropdown menus to further narrow down your type of appliance. The average wattage of this appliance is filled out automatically. Put in the number of hours, days and weeks the appliance is used and MAC will calculate for you how much that appliance contributes to your bill per day/week/month. Of course, these are all rough estimates. Wattage can change depending on the brand and model of the appliance. But this gives you an initial feel already which are the energy guzzlers in your home.
Fig. 3 My Bill Manager |
Fig. 4 Consumption Manager |
Energy Efficiency Adviser gives you handy tips to save energy consumption.
Fig. 5 Energy Efficiency Adviser |
Target Bill Amount Estimator lets you set your desired target bill amount, then it tells you just how many kilowatt hours you should consume to stay within that target amount.
Fig. 6 Target Bill Amount Estimator |
Fig. 7 |