Intelligent Power Monitoring Systems

FlasherZ · Jan 3, 2013

Anyone have suggestions on intelligent power monitoring for your charging circuit or home? We are served by a smaller co-op that hasn't put in Smart Meters (yet).

I prefer something network-capable; whether wired or Wi-Fi is no problem.

I have a couple that I've worked with in the past but would like to know what others use.

mknox · Jan 3, 2013

I use The Energy Detective's TED 5000. I currently monitor my whole home and (separately) my water heater. I intend to put another set of CTs on my NEMA 14-50 once I get my car in the spring.

It has a fairly decent built-in web portal that I can access at home or remotely. I also use an iPhone app with it. It can also connect to a number of third-party web presentment services (like the now discontinued Google PowerMeter and Microsoft Hohm).

FlasherZ · Jan 3, 2013

I've requested some information from the folks at Power Standards Lab, based in the SF bay area. Their PQube stuff looks interesting.

Thanks for the pointer to the TED.

CanuckS#69 · Jan 3, 2013

I have the TED 5000 setup as well with multiple CT pairs covering different panels, including a set on my 14-50 receptacle.

mknox · Jan 3, 2013

mknox said:
I use The Energy Detective's TED 5000.

While I've got the TED up and running, I think if I had it to do over again, I'd go with Brultech monitors. The TED uses powerline carrier (PLC) to communicate between the module in the electrical panel and the gateway device that connects to your router. I also use Insteon home automation equipment, which uses PLC and wireless, and I had a devil of a time isolating and filtering a circuit for the TED to communicate on. Aside from Insteon/TED communications issues, PLC is vulnerable to any kind of "noise" on the powerline such as that generated by motors or compact fluorescent bulbs. I think the PLC link between the sensor and the gateway is TED's Achilles heel, and a lot of people spend a great deal of time getting TED to talk properly.

As I say, I've gone through the headaches and my TED is coexisting nicely with the rest of my "gadgets", so I'll stick with it for now.

FlasherZ · Jan 3, 2013

Ohhh, yuck. I have Insteon and X10 and have one hell of a time with them already. Switching power supplies in my varied LED bulbs have seemed to exacerbate the situation now and then. I'll look at Brultech too - thanks!

raptorweb · Jan 4, 2013

I have been looking to do something like this for quite some time. I was originally going to roll my own system for it but I have never found the time to put everything together but I like the Brultech system.

A question to everyone that monitors their energy already. What kind of front end do you use for looking at the data? What is the best software for self hosting and best for 3rd party hosting?

donauker · Jan 4, 2013

I have also been using TED 5000 units to track total use, solar generation and vehicle charging at both my home and my work office for several years. I am using them in conjunction with a very impressive free product called it's electric. This product does data collection and archiving from the TED units and has excellent graphing and historical data viewing capabilities.

Having Insteon and X10 at home I did have to create a very simple isolated circuit behind a PLC blocker for the Measuring Transmitter Unit(MTU) to Gateway Unit connection.

mknox · Jan 4, 2013

FlasherZ said:
Ohhh, yuck. I have Insteon and X10 and have one hell of a time with them already. Switching power supplies in my varied LED bulbs have seemed to exacerbate the situation now and then. I'll look at Brultech too - thanks!

Yeah. I've now gotten rid of all my legacy X10 stuff (had been using since the '80s). The worst were those X10 wired-in light switches (that worked without a neutral). The TED would seem to like to turn them on (never off) randomly, and having my outside lights come on during the day was bad, but having my bedroom lights come on in the middle of the night was definitely not "wife-friendly" :smile:

I'm curious: Have you experienced any PLC noise issues with the Tesla charger connected?

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donauker said:
Having Insteon and X10 at home I did have to create a very simple isolated circuit behind a PLC blocker for the Measuring Transmitter Unit(MTU) to Gateway Unit connection.

Me too. I used one of these to isolate the circuit between the MTU and gateway, but there must have been some "leakage", because TED still gave me trouble with my (now replaced) X10 wired in light switches. Also, the circuit I isolated had some "noisy" devices on it (like my plasma TV) , so I had to use these to keep that circuit "clean" for TED.

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raptorweb said:
A question to everyone that monitors their energy already. What kind of front end do you use for looking at the data? What is the best software for self hosting and best for 3rd party hosting?

Well, as I'm using TED, here is a page that shows the third-party apps that work with it.

FlasherZ · Jan 4, 2013

mknox said:
I'm curious: Have you experienced any PLC noise issues with the Tesla charger connected?

No. Curiously, though, I have 2 LED globe lamps above the stove (with about 20 more in the basement and one over the sink) that will randomly turn on several X10 addresses. Only those 2 fixtures will do it; it's not the bulbs, because other bulbs do the same and those bulbs won't do it in other fixtures; it's not the fixtures because non-LED bulbs (CFL & incandescent) won't trigger it. The best I can tell it's a freakish circuit length - harmonics thing.

I spoke to the folks who make the PQube this morning. Interesting device, and it samples for line quality as well, but they don't have independent monitoring loops -- only whole-house type monitoring; and their cost is quite a bit more than the TED capabilities.

rbergquist · Jan 4, 2013

I also use the TED 5000, I grab the data nightly using a TED API to get data for Power consumed, Solar produced, Net Power Purchased (PGE) & Tesla charge amount. I combine it with weather and propane tank reading to get a summary of daily energy usage. I manually enter the data from the Tesla charge screen to see it's view of power consumed and calculate the overall efficiency. I'm hoping/waiting on a Tesla API so I can grab this data automatically from log data I presume the car keeps.

Here is the spreadsheet & accumulated data:

I have my S in the garage (temp probably 55F at night) and it looks like every other day it consumes 3.6 to 3.9 kW to replace lost battery charge, etc. This does not show on the Tesla charge screen.

mknox · Jan 4, 2013

rbergquist said:
I also use the TED 5000, I grab the data nightly using a TED API to get data for Power consumed, Solar produced, Net Power Purchased (PGE) & Tesla charge amount. I combine it with weather and propane tank reading to get a summary of daily energy usage. I manually enter the data from the Tesla charge screen to see it's view of power consumed and calculate the overall efficiency. I'm hoping/waiting on a Tesla API so I can grab this data automatically from log data I presume the car keeps.

That is fantastic, and exactly what I want to do when my car finally arrives. I'll bet that 83% efficiency would really take a hit in the Canadian winters!

woof · Jan 6, 2013

mknox said:
I'm curious: Have you experienced any PLC noise issues with the Tesla charger connected?

I also have Insteon and X-10 as well. My ActiveE when charging off an Aerovironment J-1772 EVSE causes the Insteon's to be unable to communicate with each other. I've never noticed them turning on or off at random, just poor communications between them. When the car is finished charging, everything works again. I can reliably use this as an indicator to know when the charge is complete.

When the Model S is charging off the same J-1772, I haven't noticed any problems.

When the Model S charging off the Tesla charger plugged into 110VAC, I also haven't noticed any problems.

I haven't had a chance to test the Tesla charger on 240VAC, as I don't have that yet.

dennis · Jan 6, 2013

I just had an eMonitor system from Powerhouse Dynamics installed for whole home monitoring. This system was recommended and installed by the solar engineering company that installed my PV system 6 years ago. Since my home is older and has grown over the years it was a complex installation with 6 sub-panels, 4 solar inverters, and lots of circuits. The eMonitor system is very modular and flexible. The monitoring hardware connects through one or more gateways to my home wi-fi network and from there to a remote server in the cloud where the data is accessed and analyzed through a browser-based or iPhone/Android app.

I've had the system less than a week and have already identified at least half a dozen ways to save power. If you want to get an idea of the cost of the components involved you can check out the drop-down box at the top of this page and the FAQs.

raptorweb · Jan 28, 2013

mknox said:
While I've got the TED up and running, I think if I had it to do over again, I'd go with Brultech monitors.

Thanks for mentioning the Brultech monitors. After looking at the models they have I decided to go with the 32 channel GEM. I have been using it for about 2 weeks now and just got my dashboards setup the way I want using a local install of emoncms.org. It has been a great help being able to watch all the circuits to see how I can move things around so that I should have no problem switching to at TOU plan. Plus I'm a fan of data...

If anyone is interested in seeing the end result PM me and I will forward the info to view the dashboards.

tezco · Feb 1, 2013

I'm using a data logger to record 4 channels of data once every minute. The associated software allows rather detailed analysis and there is a nice visual record of your charging peaks.

http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/show...uring-the-Total-Energy-Consumption-of-Your-EV

Here I'm looking at the average garage temperature between my S charging peaks, at the level of the battery pack (about 6" off the floor):

tezco · Feb 2, 2013

Comsumer guide to energy monitoring systems in Feb/Mar 2013 issue of Home Power magazine, with a comparative table covering 8 manufacturers.

tga · May 2, 2015

Rather than start a new thread, does anyone have any updates? FlasherZ, what system did you wind up going with?

I have a fairly complex Insteon/X10 setup. I was afraid I'd have problems with the Enphase microinverter PLC, but that turned out to be unfounded. I'm not sure I want to add more PLC protocols to the mix, however.

Is the Brultech still the way to go?

FlasherZ · May 2, 2015

tga said:
Rather than start a new thread, does anyone have any updates? FlasherZ, what system did you wind up going with?

I have a fairly complex Insteon/X10 setup. I was afraid I'd have problems with the Enphase microinverter PLC, but that turned out to be unfounded. I'm not sure I want to add more PLC protocols to the mix, however.

Is the Brultech still the way to go?

Unfortunately, I didn't. It's still on the list, but it's lower in priority. For solar, I use net meter plus the SMI portal data from my solar unit. I just don't have monitoring for the car.

I use PLC for my ethernet link to the machine shed, Insteon and X10 for some lighting, and I'm use there's some other noise on the line from various equipment. Noise is a big problem with the X10; I have a repeater/phase ocupler, but even it doesn't work quite right... it works best with 2 radio receivers, one plugged into an outlet on each phase.

Intelligent Power Monitoring Systems

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