Whole house power monitoring.

[shabba]

Hi,
I see some commercial offering that count meter ticks but are there any clamp style current meters that people have used to measure power usage in a house?

Thanks!

[gohan]

Of course there are, you could also make one out of an Arduino Uno one clamp an a small transformer, it depends if you want to go DIY or go with commercial product

[shabba]

DIY all the way! I assumed posting here would imply mysensors based but I guess I really should have been clear.

Thanks!

[dakipro]

Interested in the topic as well.
Also, would it be possible get the power for arduino from the clamp itself, wirelessly? :D
or you must have separate power source for arduino (I know this later is the case, but... you never know what smart people here can come up with)

[rozpruwacz]

lately I discovered EnOcean. They produce energy harvesting sensors for home automation. E.g. a batteryless push button :) It harvests energy from button presses - how cool is that :D They also have other energy harvesting technologies, but I don't think they would provide enough power for arduino board that measures the current and voltage continuously ...

[dakipro]

quick google search gave me this https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/189425/leach-circuit-to-power-microcontroller

[gohan]

@rozpruwacz Why would want energy harvesting on an energy meter that is actually measuring the mains? You can just use a power supply and you are fine. Anyway, if you want to go DIY look at openenergymonitor site on how to build the sensor

[rozpruwacz]

@gohan I don't know, I just pointed out that it may be possible ;)

[gohan]

I have looked at enocean stuff some time ago, and it works similarly to zwave but with energy harvesting in mind. Btw since I brought up zwave... https://aeotec.com/z-wave-home-energy-measure

[shabba]

All I am looking for really is a sensor/circuit that I can hook up to a mini and mysensors network.

[gohan]

https://openenergymonitor.org/forum-archive/node/58.html then you add the mysensors code for communication.

[shabba]

@gohan Thank you!

[dakipro]

@gohan said in Whole house power monitoring.:

Why would want energy harvesting on an energy meter that

I live in building where meter is in a common locker, thus no plugs nor power supplies.

[gohan]

@dakipro then you should probably have a breaker box in the apartment, so you could put it there instead

[Nca78]

@gohan said in Whole house power monitoring.:

@dakipro then you should probably have a breaker box in the apartment, so you could put it there instead

That's a good idea but it's a bit tight in there :(

[gohan]

@nca78 nobody said life is easy :sweat_smile:

[Tmaster]

I'm using an arduino pro mini with an W500 Ethernet module connected directly to router,and a clamp from ebay(100amps i think). arduino and w500 fits inside a small box and its inside main power box,clamped to the main wire from main eletric deferential . I have the (ATI) Telecomonication box at side of power box so its easy to connect to the router. i dont use transformer for volt read,just read Amps because my power its very stable at 230/235v and this is just for " power waste "control

on first moth that i build it i saved 30€/moth in power(i not a commercial advertisement :P ).i had the electric resistance from water solar heating panel (3000w) working during the night,useless because we don't need hot water in morning,only at end of the day. so now i have another arduino that handle the hot water if there is no enough sun during the day... ( arduino pro minifor the win!!!:+1: )

This is a screenshot from my emoncms page. like you see my wife its doing cakes and dinner,and the oven and induction plate eat a lot of power ![

[superczar]

@gohan said in Whole house power monitoring.:

https://openenergymonitor.org/forum-archive/node/58.html then you add the mysensors code for communication.

+1 to that
I have been using a single clamp sensor on my neutral at the power meter (SCT-030) hooked to an arduino/ESP8266
It's been working great close to 3 years now with an accuracy of +- 7%
I even use the readings to detect brown-outs and trigger devices to original state after power flips back to mains from the back-up (I live in an area where brown-outs , or power-cuts as we call them , are quite common)

[kimot]

+/-7% is good, because Domoticz has it own error -8% when energy consumption calculation is done by Domoticz.
When I send 660 W constantly a few hours, I obtain energy consumption 604 - 609 Wh in this interval :o(
They do not add last 5 min energy consumption in one hour interval ( Argument - because data arrived not at xx:00:00 but XX:00:05 )
Look at Domoticz forum about this bug, if interested.
Boys from Domoticz said - it is not important ....

[gohan]

@kimot yeah, 5 minutes intervals are not the best for that kind of statistics; you'd probably better look at influxDB for more accurate statistics