Monitoring power usage by branch circuit
user-53610
| Posted in Energy, Heating & Insulation on
This might be slightly off topic but I built a system to monitor power usage in my house. It monitors every branch circuit in the house with three second resolution and logs the data for a year. I then wrote software to look at graphs of the data by circuit. This has turned out to be amazingly handy to see how my electric bill adds up. It’s also interesting to see what difference it actually makes to dial down my fridge and other appliances (I was particularly amazed at the toaster and electric dryer). Anyways, I did a little write up about how I put this together and I though someone out there might get a kick out of it.
Replies
.........change out your breakers for "smart" ones , and your wife will be even more impressed, huh?
if the dryer is running, the toaster is offline . LOL
Seriously, very nicely done , maybe could be used by folks who have off peak power
A couple years back I wrote some software that let you budget your power. It monitored kwh optically at the meter (it watched the spinning disk on the meter so no custom meter or hardware). You could enter information from your last utility bill (including variable rate, time of day, day of week pricing, and all the pentaly factors) and from that you could tell the software how much you wanted to spend on electricity. It would then show you what you had to do to achieve it in real time. As you went over on one day, it would project forward the rest of the month to adjust, etc.I didn't do that in this software, but I've got to say one of the most convenient things is load balancing. The system sends me an email any time I start to load up any of the circuits above 60%. I then go back and move plugs to different outlets so I'm never close to overloading any given circuit.It was also interesting to see that I hit 90+ amps (with 100amp service) surprisingly often.
if you physically move plugs around, you could install the "smart breakers and have them shut off those circuits for you, ....more energy mgt. Have installed them on infrared heaters in parking decks, more heat is applied as the temp drops"
It's a neat concept. The problem in my house is that while I have new wiring from the panel, it mostly splices into old wiring in the attic. The old stuff runs all over the place so turning off a circuit can disable lights on one side of the house and outlets on the other. What would be really handy is to be able to control the lights so I can force them off at night. I've seen 'smart switches' that can run back to a control panel but they require an extra signal wire.On the other hand, this is mostly academic since my $200+ monthly electric bill is mostly a result of my computer gear (and the air conditioning unit that cools it). I build a custom video system for my house so I can stream movies and tv through out the house but the video server alone has 15 hard disks in it. Can't turn that one off ;) Anyways, I write software for a living so I pretty much consider this a work expense.
ok then, howzabout X-10 stuff like......... this ... http://www.smarthome.com/x10recep.html"
Another good suggestion. I looked at this stuff for years, although most recently from a security point of view. In the case of security I wanted to control flood lights in a certain way but found that the x10 stuff didn't do quite what I wanted and the motion sensors weren't quite what I wanted either so I made my own and a custom controller board to run it all. I still look at the x10 stuff from time to time but like most projects I'd like to do, I have a hard time finding the time to get around to it.Mostly the stuff my wife wants me to do gets the highest priority (see my other posting in the construction techniques area about building a ceiling dome: http://www.kondra.com/dome/dome.html). In the long run I'd like to add a bit more home automation stuff but I'll have to finish off the laundry room cabinets and bathroom remodel before I even think about any of this stuff ;>
you are remodeling your bathroom ?wow me too, and what a nightmare is has been !! I picked a leviton cat with their X-10 stuff in there, all of those gizmos are foreign to me. nice talkin with you, later David"
Nice site.
For those who want to try this 'on the cheap', places such as Pico have $300 10 channel/12bit data loggers that plug into USB and come with software. The A/D converter itself is only a $5 chip, so you can copy the first unit and get all the channels you want. Snap on current transformers can be handwound for 50 cents each, not counting your time.
That is cool. I'd probably be looking at a divorce if I installed something like that.
Figure out a way to market it to the general public and I'll help you spend the profits.
> I'd probably be looking at a divorce if I installed something like that.I get more crap about the fact that the only AC in the house is in the attic to keep the servers cool. In fact I even built a set of varilable speed blowers from scratch along with controls to switch back and forth between blowers and AC. Of course this didn't stop the house cleaner from turning the attic thermostat off when we were out of town for a week (which crashed everything), so I switched everything to computer control.In the mean time my wife tries to adjust the temp in the house by turning on the heat (which comes from the single vent in the center of the house), or opening the windows to cool things down.