In before all the “Woah High Voltage!” hubbub.

Anyway, I like the wall display.
I’ll take any useful thing to hang on the wall instead of another DIY clock.

He could have saved himself a lot of time and placed a photodiode on his existing utility meter. It’s a standard, I believe- 1 blink per power unit (1kW/hr, I think?)

No high voltage, no complex code. Could’ve done it off a parallel or serial port or using an Xbee’s existing IO functions.

It’s perfectly “real time”; the blinks happen as fast as you use power. Your utility meter is power-factor corrected.

Your meter doesn’t need to be weather protected or near a power source. If you don’t like the idea of the Xbee, run a thin cable to the meter out your window. Fine gauge, 2 conductor wire would have gotten the job done.

Volts, frequency? You can get that from any UPS, or by plugging in something into the wall in a project box.

If it’s fair to scream blue-bloody-murder when someone uses an Arduino to talk to a garage door and an Xbee, it’s fair to point out that you completely ignored the simplest, easiest, cheapest, most elegant solution available to you.

A residential meter only reads Real Power. My meter reads much more. And it’s not real time. If I’m only consuming 1KW per hour, there’s only one blink per hour. For a whole hour, I have no idea what my real time power draw is until it blinks.

In my case the cable would have to run down three stories, and travel another 800 feet to the meter. Not to mention be obvious to any safety inspectors walking around. Still think it’s practical?

And combining data from multiple sources like UPS becomes complex. This one sensor gives it all, in a wireless signal I can pull down to multiple places like my wall mounted display and soon into a internet connection for logging. Your solution is not practical, cheap nor elegant.

Very kewl. Not the way I would have gone, but we have different backgrounds. Thanks for the share.

@ColinB; Just used my O-scope and voltmeter, my line voltage is coming in at 58Hz. I live in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, fwiw.

@Bill; I understand exactly. I have lived in plenty of complexes where it was inconvenient to even look at, let alone monitor. Thankfully, I own a house now, so upgrades / modifications are a snap now.

Bill, the blinking rate was such that I could turn on a light and see the effect about 10-15 seconds later on the wireless power meter my electric company sold to me for ~$30; it used a pair of AA batteries, attached to the meter, and watched for the blinks, then transmitted over RF to the base station, which showed live kw and accumulated power usage stats (total and daily, with a meter that compared the current day to the previous.) So yes, it IS “real time”. I threw out a (wrong) guess. It’s actually one thousand blinks per kilowatt-hour.

http://blog.janbottorff.com/?p=109

Second: the biggest consumer of electricity will be electric heat (if you have it), followed by your dryer (if you use an electric dryer), followed by your fridge, followed by lights and computer equipment, if it runs 24/7. Most of those are resistive loads, and thus have a PF of 1. If you computer gear was made in the last 10 years, its power supplies are PF-corrected. So that really leaves just your fridge.

If you’re having power problems, call your utility company. They have power monitors they can plug in / connect.

Woah! Brett, your solution is quick and simple. Perfect for not caring about intricate details. Bill, Your’s is far from quick or simple, but gets those intricate details. Let’s shake hands now…

Bill, I do like the method/build. Great work.

Oh noes, it is near teh mainz!

Is the rat blinking yet?

@pff,

While I won’t deny being ill in the head, maybe I can shed some insight into my insanity. As an EE always did want to do this, but recently I had more of a reason.

My girlfriend who lives with me. She had a few times now where she can’t imagine why our electric bill was so high. So now we have a readout of current usage. In fact, I’m changing the display soon to show $/hour or day of current usage rate, so she can see exactly how much money her little personal space heater is costing. (one example)

I have had my own denials too. It’s just nice to see your money flow out of your pocket hour by hour, as opposed to all at once per month with not much to relate it too.

Sell what? The clamps, or a power monitoring device?

@pff

I have to say I agree. At the end of the month it shows how much you’ve used and how much you owe. If you want to use less use less. If you want to see which things are using more or less power so you can use them less or turn them off then why not just turn them all off and only use them when you need them. If your trying to waste less then use it less or buy a more efficent version of it.

@Bill,

I was planning on setting up something as such for my home, power clamps distributed around so I get more in depth view of the consumption around the house and Id use the blinks from the main meter to confirm the measurement, All of this hooked to my home server for graphs and more fun. Id be interested in the progress of your project, thanks :)

Having the ability to turn off comments on HAD would be great. I always get sucked into these waste of time reads of people just completely ripping apart someone that took the time to build an interesting project. Regardless how good or bad a project is, they will always contain useful information that can only add to the community.

Cool build build Bill, I recently purchased these clamps and was planning on playing around with them. This info should be useful.

Some people get their electricity from natural gas generators, which may output 58 Hz if the DIP switches are set incorrectly:
http://zillerelectric.com/forums/showthread.php?t=334

What’s up with the ‘Recent posts’ thing under the post? It shows:
‘Bill Meara – 2010-12-22 03:38:54 (12/22/2010)
em – 2010-12-21 23:56:55 (12/21/2010)
reza – 2010-12-21 22:54:57 (12/21/2010)
Rob Wentworth – 2010-12-21 22:08:04 (12/21/2010)
Frode – 2010-12-21 18:00:47 (12/21/2010)’
??

Yes goddamn heaters and ac units sucking up all your energy. Personally I only care about monitoring the power to my computers and upses are good for that.

Electric companies are big retards, if you would put something like this near to the meter they would report you for stealing electricity…

Some areas in Europe they use wireless meters with GSM communication. Which means nobody from the power company goes out to read your meter in all months. They most likely never go out unless it has some problem or have to be replaced and then they might even call you first.
Consider the possibilities getting free energy on those areas :D The power companies are know that the rich fuks living there wouldnt bother stealing it.

@pff

Some studies have suggested that having continuous feedback on energy usage can help people reduce.

For example, some cars have a display that shows the current gas usage. With detailed feedback on how much energy one is using at the moment, people can learn to modify their behavior to increase efficiency. (This can be taken to extremes with hypermiling, but just generally being aware can encourage more efficient use.)

Energy feedback devices may have similar effects in home. It isn’t always obvious what the big users are, or how significant a particular action is. Having a meter right there showing the CO emissions, $ used, etc. can be a reminder, incentive and education tool.

I haven’t seen studies that look at the long term impact (are the reductions transient, do they continue if monitoring removed, etc.)

@0×4368726973
What you are saying sounds unbelievable. I’d love to be convinced. Can you elaborate?