Patent ID: 8265776

Claim:
A method of monitoring electrical energy usage using a plurality of energy monitoring devices comprising at least one power plug receptacle, the method comprising: receiving, by a central device, from an integral digital wireless communications circuit included in each of the energy monitoring devices, a power consumption corresponding to an electrical current drawn by an electrical load connected to each of the at least one power plug receptacles included in the energy monitoring device; and transmitting one or more instructions from the remote device to one or more of the energy monitoring devices, to separately alter a flow of the electrical current to one or more of the power plug receptacles included in the one or more of the energy monitoring devices; obtaining power cost information from the Internet; calculating a power consumption cost corresponding to each of the power plug receptacles using the power cost information and the power consumption received from the corresponding energy monitoring device; automatically determining a location for each of the plurality of energy monitoring devices; and displaying a graphic including the location of each of the plurality of energy monitoring devices and the respective power consumption cost.