Helping to better manage rising electricity costs for South Africans has become the goal of a plucky startup called Home Bug.

Started by electrical engineer Neil Rudden just over a year ago, Home Bug has created an energy consumption reader that is either plugged into an electricity distribution board or placed over a prepaid metre.

The device then proceeds to record the power usage on a second by second basis. This information is sent through GPRS technology or an Ethernet line to the Home Bug website.

Subsequently, homeowners can also log in at any time and see what their energy usage is at various times of the day. The system also tells homeowners as to what is using the most electricity in their homes.

The Home Bug Base Unit, which can have modules such as water and lighting devices added to it, costs R1150. Meanwhile, the Home Bug Monitoring online electricity monitoring and reporting service costs R35 per month.

Rudden says he developed Home Bug after he became frustrated with the constant checking of an electricity metre which was located in his outside garage.

Rudden has further introduced his offering at a time when South African electricity provider Eskom is hiking prices in a bid to raise more capital to build more power plants in the country to cope with growing demand. The National Energy Regulator of South Africa earlier this year granted approval to Eskom to raise electricity prices by 8%.

Meanwhile, in the year since going full-time on the project, Home Bug has installed around 12 devices in homes around Cape Town and is currently working on a second version of the product that will be available ‘soon’, says Rudden.

“We take that information every minute and the status of the other devices and we send that information up to the website, the new device uses GSM technology, and so every minute you can go onto the website and see what has happened in the home along with the minimum usage and maximum usage within that minute as well, its all about getting an idea of your energy consumption,” Rudden says.

The Home Bug founder is adamant that his offering is no magic wand that will automatically save energy or money.

But he says that it is instead a tool that, if used correctly, could be used to improve streamline ones energy consumption.

“The only way to save electricity is not to use it; there is no magic: it's just don’t turn things on. It’s a matter of finding out where your biggest consumers are and where you can optimise matters.”

The startup is a member of the 88mph business incubator located in Cape Town. Home Bug was selected from 400 candidates to participate in the acceleration programme and, according to Rudden, in only a few months they have already begun to benefit from their involvement.

“We started seeing, after being in operation for about seven months, that as a heavily engineering focused team that we need guys who were more business and tech savvy than we are.

“We needed to team up with a crowd like this who can guide us in terms of where we need to go in strategies to get the product out there and who we need to speak to,” says Rudden.

As far as plans for the future go, Home Bug has identified the goal of having their device installed in 1,000 homes by the end of 2013.

Rudden says this is achievable with the roll-out of a second generation device.

“The new device: you take out of the box, stick it on the wall next to the pre-paid metre, it communicates with GSM. You just go to the website, enter your serial number and see what you are doing. That will assist us with a faster uptake of the product,” explains Rudden.

He says this version of the product could even find its way into stores and warehouses.

An initial run of somewhere between 25 and 100 devices is planned in conjunction with a marketing campaign in which people will be able to a pay a once-off fee of R199 for a two month test period.

As electricity prices continue to burgeon, Rudden believes that Home Bug has what it takes to help homeowners save money and also contribute to a so-called green future.

“What we have done differently is take what we have learnt in the industrial space and move that down into the residential space.

“We have done it in industry for years, the optimising and constant improvement process, we haven’t done it in homes because it’s not been financially worthwhile but today that is a different story,” concludes Rudden.