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Device to Monitor Electricity Use


canalsiderenovation

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Something like this to monitor one appliance at a time https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/UK-Plug-in-Electricity-Power-Consumption-Meter-Energy-Monitor-Watt-Kwh-Analyzer/333855058767?hash=item4dbb4feb4f:g:36kAAOSwL0Nf~Xn7

 

One day I will buy one and get to the bottom of our "other stuff" energy usage.

 

Plug each appliance into it for a day or a week and see how much everything is using.

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Just now, ProDave said:

Something like this to monitor one appliance at a time https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/UK-Plug-in-Electricity-Power-Consumption-Meter-Energy-Monitor-Watt-Kwh-Analyzer/333855058767?hash=item4dbb4feb4f:g:36kAAOSwL0Nf~Xn7

 

One day I will buy one and get to the bottom of our "other stuff" energy usage.

 

Plug each appliance into it for a day or a week and see how much everything is using.

 

It's my new obsession. As I've been monitoring our heat pump use daily along with the solar too it's meant I've been able to separate out the heating/hot water over other things. What we can't seem to work out is why in the past 24 hours it doubled for our 'other' use. 

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If you want more detail and some history get an emonPi from the open energy crew in Wales - great kit.

 

You can set up as many dashboards as you want and also measure temperatures.

 

https://shop.openenergymonitor.com/emonpi/

 

I should add I'm nothing to do with them, except from being a member of the forum there. It's all open source, so we set up our own system on a spare Rasp Pi and also built a Solar PV diverter following guides.  There's a huge amount of info on the forum.

 

Simon

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11 minutes ago, Bramco said:

It's all open source, so we set up our own system on a spare Rasp Pi

What I have done with the CurrentCost

This is the data I collect:

 

Date and Time, Temperature, Power

18/01/2021 00:00:07,19.9,00058
18/01/2021 00:00:18,19.9,00049
18/01/2021 00:00:24,19.9,00045
18/01/2021 00:00:29,19.9,00042
18/01/2021 00:00:35,19.9,00039

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An emonPi would give you more granularity and the possibility of tailoring it to your requirements, but hey, it's horses for courses. There are many ways to do this - was just suggesting one we've found very useful.

 

For example

 

emonPi.thumb.JPG.ead5e32d0775f6df42b7d97cde765447.JPG

 

Simon

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54 minutes ago, Bramco said:

An emonPi would give you more granularity and the possibility of tailoring it to your requirements, but hey, it's horses for courses. There are many ways to do this - was just suggesting one we've found very useful.

 

For example

 

emonPi.thumb.JPG.ead5e32d0775f6df42b7d97cde765447.JPG

 

Simon

 

You lost me at Rasp Pi ?

 

Unless it's the sweet shortcrust pastry variety

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 10/02/2021 at 15:27, Bramco said:

 

I didn't say Rasp Pi - I said emonPi. It has a Pi in it with everything set up.

 

Simon

 

 

Looks interesting.

 

My meter is in a kiosk remote from house, however I have a solar PV diverter (to drive supply to hot water generation when otherwise exporting) and it has a similar clamp on sensor on  n house wiring so I suppose I could put it adjacent to that?

Edited by Bitpipe
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I spent all of £17 for a din rail electricity meter, the size of an MCB that can take 45 amps.

 

Good value and worth considering for certain installations where you are happy to go and read the meter.

 

I’m going to install on my EV charger to record this consumption.

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16 minutes ago, TonyT said:

Thanks

A quick look and it says that basic current is 5A. 

My night storage heater has a load of 13A for up to 7 hours.  So may struggle, will have to check.

Useful website and reasonable prices though.

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2 hours ago, Bitpipe said:

Looks interesting.

 

My meter is in a kiosk remote from house, however I have a solar PV diverter (to drive supply to hot water generation when otherwise exporting) and it has a similar clamp on sensor on  n house wiring so I suppose I could put it adjacent to that?

 

If you can put a clamp next to the the one you have in the CU already then you would be fine.

 

Gives instantaneous power consumption.

 

Simon

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20 minutes ago, TonyT said:

 

There are versions around with and RS 485 interface which give instantaneous power. The issue with a pulse output is that you're only measuring power in chunks, a 1000th or 100th of a kWh (depending on the device) and to see things in real time you need the instantaneous power reading.

 

Simon

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1 minute ago, Bramco said:

The issue with a pulse output is that you're only measuring power in chunks, a 1000th or 100th of a kWh (depending on the device) and to see things in real time you need the instantaneous power reading.

While that is true, if you are long term logging it reduces the file size.

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14 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

While that is true, if you are long term logging it reduces the file size.

 

And 1TB of storage is less than £50, so file size really isn't an issue.

 

Anyone wanting to get a handle on their consumption and generation should decide whether they are happy with low resolution data or real time data. I've found it very useful to have the real time data and have data since 2016 and the disk it is saved on is .

 

Simon

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24 minutes ago, Bramco said:

Anyone wanting to get a handle on their consumption and generation should decide whether they are happy with low resolution data or real time data.

I found it is really down to how much post analysis one want to do and what you are actually after finding out.

 

Data can be a little confusing sometimes. Here is an example.

 

Temp Diff Power Ext Temp Internal Temp Count Hours
7 414 8 15 1
8 7478 10 19 1
9 2161 10 20 34
10 1205 10 20 101
11 1241 9 21 134
12 1174 8 20 177
13 1419 6 20 156
14 1617 5 19 93
15 1153 4 19 104
16 1748 3 19 116
17 1502 2 20 95
18 755 2 20 56
19 388 1 21 18
20 700 1 22 13
21 1039 1 22 5

 

It shows the mean power (W), mean external temp (°C), mean internal temp (°C) and the number of hours in each temperature difference bin.

The important thing is that the first two rows only account for 2 hours out of 1104 hours (had the door open and then a fan heater and oven on).

Similar is true for the last 4 rows, they only account for 8% of the time, even though they were extreme temperature difference (for down here).

The main thing I wanted to know was how thermally stable my lightweight house is, and the amount of energy it uses per degree temperature difference.

So taking the data between the 10°C and 17°C temperature difference bins, my house is within 1°C either way of my target temperature (20°C) with an average power consumption of 1.382 kW.

This works out as a mean of an extra 56W per °C temperature difference.

The confusing bit is if the extremes are taken into account, a total of 10% of the time (over this period, winter 1104 hours), it shows that there is a negative slope -162W/°C.

The kWh difference is an extra 16 kWh/°C (excluding the extremes) and -3 kWh/°C including the extremes.

 

So the moral is, be careful with data.

(The other moral is that it is easy to make an error)

 

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