Oil Fired Boiler Energy Meter

[funkyG]

I am hoping to start monitoring all energy use around my home, and am in the middle of setting up gateways, controllers etc, and pulse-count power meters. I have got a bit stuck though when it comes to my oil fired boiler.

I know it must be possible, but I am not sure how to implement it. I know the boiler uses a fixed diameter oil jet at a fixed pressure, so I know how many litres per hour of oil it uses, and I also have access to the live and neutral terminals of the actual burner, so I can tell when it is firing.

So I need to find out how to monitor each minute of firing, add these up to give an hourly rate of use, and a total used per day, week, month etc.

The solution may lend itself to other things too, like daily hours of sunshine meter, hours of rain meter, anything really that is effectively a binary (on or off) state with an interesting time component.

I was considering using a pulse-count power meter and using the binary state of the boiler to control a flashing LED of known, fixed frequency.

Anyone tried anything like this?

[gregl]

Hey @funkyG - do you live in Saudi ?

In my last house i had an oil, heater.... to fill was $$ as my car...and i used ~200L of Oil in about 3 days. ( was very cold! in Sydney) Suffice to say i only did that once and replaced it with AirCon.

Anyway - have a look at the power meter sketches... could you say 10m of runtime is 2.1kw and send that to your g/w?

[RJ_Make]

@funkyG What kind of heater is it? Is it a boiler (water or steam), is it forced air?

[funkyG]

Hi. Its a pumped pressurised condensing oil fired boiler, in the UK, a Grant Vortex. It is a boiler with a pressure jet oil burner, Riello type. There are 10 radiators and a circulator pump that moves the heated water through the system.

The central heating controls call for heat, and the boiler will fire up until the return water temp reaches a set level, then it just circulates the water until it needs more heat. The burner fires up as required by the boiler and I believe the time it fires is directly proportional to the amount of oil it uses.

[funkyG]

Saudi! I wish..., no I am in sunny North Wales!

I think you are on to something, equating a set period of time with an amount of kw. I am struggling to convert the pulse counts to measuring time periods. Maybe if I run a flashing led circuit off the burner and count those pulses?

[RJ_Make]

@funkyG Are you wanting to capture both fuel and electric?

[funkyG]

@ServiceXp I am not sure, the boiler uses only about 100w, compared to the fuel consumption ( 20kw) is small. The fuel is more important I guess.

[RJ_Make]

@funkyG
That 100w includes the circulation pump(s)?

[funkyG]

The circulation pump is separate. I am really after measuring the oil component, for energy and for tank refill prediction. The electrical side of the heating I will lump in with all the other electrical items on a single pulsed power meter.

I am now thinking I can add a few lines of code to the pulsed power meter sketch to flash an led every 1000 millis, from a digital output pin. I then connect this pin via a relay to the digital input pin of the original sketch. This relay will close when the boiler is firing thus permitting the 1 second pulses into the sketch and for it to count as normal.

Any ideas?

[hek]

For refill prediction you might wanna add a distance sensor in the tank (if possible) measuring the oil level. There is a variant that can handle rough conditions in the "shop".