Monitoring Electricity Usage

[mike2016]

Hi,

Just wondering what people are using to monitor their household electricity usage? Is there anything free to use which holds historical data? 

Thanks!

[SteamyTea]

I use an old CurrenCost device with an optical sensor connected to a Raspberry Pi.

I wrote the code myself, so not perfect, but it does work.

I set one up at @Joe90 house.  That one has the more basic and less accurate clamp on sensor.  That is chugging along nicely and I can even remotely access it when I am parked in his drive.

I have seen some designs for a basic optical meter, these read the red flashing LED and intend to make one up and see how good they are.

The trouble with homemade stuff is that there is a lot of fiddling about to get the data off them as one needs to get them networked via the home router, or your phone.

Edited June 20, 2019 by SteamyTea

[Jeremy Harris]

I fitted one of these meters in the tails that run to our consumer unit: https://www.universalmeterservices.co.uk/elster-a100c-p-150.html

 

The big advantage this particular meter has is that it has an IR output on the left hand side that constantly transmits data from all the internal registers.  The data it sends out includes:

 

•  Product Code   (Product code number)
•  Firmware Rev Code   (Firmware revision)
•  Manufacturing Serial Number    (Specified serial number)
•  Utility Serial Number       (Utility specified serial number - 16 character maximum)
•  Configuration Number   (Programmed configuration)
•  Energy Register Definitions  
•  Energy Registers Readings     
•  Status Flags     Including present import/export status
•  Error Flags   
•  Anti-creep Time    Number of hours the meter has been in kWh anti-creep
•  Time Powered-up     Time since last power up  
•  Time in Rate 1     Number of whole hours Rate 1 has been active
•  Time in Rate 2    Number of whole hours Rate 2 has been active
•  Power Fail Count     Total number of power fails   
•  Watchdog Reset Count   Total number of watchdog timer resets
•  Reverse Energy Event Count   Number of times reverse energy was detected

 

It sends this data about once a second, and it's dead easy to stick an IR receiver over the port and then just read the serial data stream.