E.on in the doghouse for Data Overkill

I just recently received a free home energy monitor pack from E.on. This is a great deal, they send you a free box with a transmitter that attaches to your mains fuse box and a wireless monitor device that you put somewhere handy in your house. This lets you easily see at a glance how many watts you are using at any one time and how many KwH you have consumed in the past day / week / month.

So great, we can all use these boxes to monitor how much energy we are using and can find easy ways to cut down and save the planet. 

The wireless monitor box comes with a USB lead and cd to install PC based client software. This is to enable you to download data from the wireless monitor/collector via USB into your PC, enabling you to do more sophisticated analysis of your energy usage. 

The downside is that each client install requires a SQL Server 2005 Express install. This is in my opinion slightly overkill for logging a bit of data about your energy usage!