Whole house electricity monitor in real-time and stats

[mathjak107]

yep , power factor being poor is a utility company ding not a user .

our kwhr meters record true power so if we have poor factor we are using electricity the utility company can't measure .

many utilities give to discounts if you put power factor correction capacitors on your motors if you have a factory

[Nonesuch]

If you recently received a new AMR enabled meter, then your power meter may already be broadcasting your power usage several times a minute, all you need is a $15 receiver and software. I'm out in the boonies, and yet when I turned on the receiver I immediately began getting not only my own meter readings, but several neighbor's as well!

Originally Posted by rational1

Looks like two clamp-on ammeter sensors and some electronics with a wireless interface.

Seems pricey for what it does. However, I personally would not need or want what it does.

I do need and want what it does, but so far all the reviews I've found suggest that Sense isn't great at distinguishing between all but the most power-hungry of loads.

I bought a TED 5000 back in 2010 when they were making similar promises about being able to differentiate between what devices were currently drawing power. Eventually TED backed down on those features when they realized it was a lot more difficult than they originally thought.

[selogic]

Originally Posted by mathjak107

yep , power factor being poor is a utility company ding not a user .

our kwhr meters record true power so if we have poor factor we are using electricity the utility company can't measure .

Uh , no . Some power companies ( most ) penalize industrial customers for having poor power factor . Utility companies can measure Vars very easily .

[T. Damon]

Originally Posted by jean_ji

We have a smart meter on the house and I can go into my online account with the utility company and see my daily usage and the estimated cost for the month. We just replaced our AC a few days into the billing cycle. I’m waiting to see how the actual bill compares to the estimated one after the change. I wrote the estimated cost down, because the estimate changes as time goes on.

That doesn’t go into specifics but it gives me a figure to work with.

Yeah our utility company website will track your usage down to 15 minute increments on a graph and an exact number for that increment for any day you choose. I couldn’t see why you would want to get anymore accurate or data than that.

[Nonesuch]

Originally Posted by T. Damon

Yeah our utility company website will track your usage down to 15 minute increments on a graph and an exact number for that increment for any day you choose. I couldn’t see why you would want to get anymore accurate or data than that.

I could see many reasons to get more granularity than 15-minute averages.

Sure, you could go around and unplug individual appliances, plug them in via a Kill-a-Watt and then sit there and write down measurements, but then what do you do about hardwired appliances? I'd like to know the total draw from various hardwired loads (e.g. overhead lighting) without having to run the load for 30 minutes and just hope nothing else kicks on during that interval.

More specialized, when I was planning on installing a whole-house automatic backup generator, it was handy to know true peak wattage as well as 1-minute average. This allowed me to right-size the generator to install and also determine which appliances/circuits to exclude from the automatic transfer switch.

Devices with motors often start showing early signs of a fault by longer/higher "Inrush current". Averaging over 15 minutes completely misses this.

[don6170]

Originally Posted by Nonesuch

I could see many reasons to get more granularity than 15-minute averages.

Most AMI meters are capable of recording shorter intervals, typically down to 5 minutes. From the Utility perspective, that is 3 times more data to store that 15-minute intervals, which itself is 4 times more that doing just hourly intervals.

People (and utilities) were happy to get usage information once a month, in the form of a paper bill that came a couple weeks after the actual usage. Now, some are wanting 1-minute interval data.

Originally Posted by Nonesuch

Devices with motors often start showing early signs of a fault by longer/higher "Inrush current". Averaging over 15 minutes completely misses this.

Even one minute intervals may not capture the desired information. Residential meters are typically set up to capture kwh not kw.

[Nonesuch]

Originally Posted by don6170

Most AMI meters are capable of recording shorter intervals, typically down to 5 minutes. From the Utility perspective, that is 3 times more data to store that 15-minute intervals, which itself is 4 times more that doing just hourly intervals.

The Itron ERT compatible "it's not a smart meter" installed up here in N.NE by the predominant utility are broadcasting IDM messages which include 5-minute data, even though the utility doesn't have the infrastructure to collect it (they drive by once a month to pick up the raw reading of total usage).

Originally Posted by don6170

...Now, some are wanting 1-minute interval data.

Even one minute intervals may not capture the desired information. Residential meters are typically set up to capture kwh not kw.

I'm using TED Pro, it stores total usage every second, keeps 1 hour online at that granularity, a week at 1-hour, etc. Or you can upload or otherwise offload the data. Also supports per-breaker data collection, but that's only captured once per minute.

Sample of 1 second data, showing short-lived loads:


If 1hz is not sufficiently fine-grained resolution, Sense Home Energy Monitor says their product "takes current and voltage measurements over 1 million times every second".