#Monitor electricity usage

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

slow star
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Hi I'm interested in the best way to monitor my electric usage. I've attached a picture of my mains electric coming into the house.. Thanks

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modest jetty
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it depends on your meter and utility provider. many modern meters do have a port where you can read the stats, but you may have to ask nicely for your utility provider to open it.

it would be relevant to state country, utility provider and make/model of the meter.

slow star
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Sorry I should have included I'm from the UK (Northern Ireland) specifically, our power is delivered by NIE and as far as I'm aware no smart meters have reached here yet.

modest jetty
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then i think the cheap diy way is current sensors with clamps that can open/close so you can install them without involving an electrician and/or your utility.

one sensor around each phase, mounted the right way. and then some magic sauce helper to make an entity?

or get a ready made device that mounts into the wiring and has to be properly installed. this will cost a lot more but give more data that will not make sense to most people. 😄

and you will probably still not agree 100% with the utility.

a final option is something that reads the display on your meter. should agree 100% with our bill but will not give data fast enough to base automations on

slow star
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Interesting, I don't really want to mess around with much in here unless I absolutely have to, surely (as stupid as this sounds) I'll need some sort of power to run a clamp or monitor system?

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Or would I be better setting something up at my fusebox inside?

modest jetty
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if you have a power outlet near your fuse box you could run something like a esp32 board off that, read attached current clamps and publish to mqtt. some diy involved

modest jetty
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there are smart fuses available as well. with built in power monitoring and the ability to turn the circuit on/off remotely. very expensive last time i checked

slow star
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Thanks, I'll explore my options. I've no power sockets near my fuse box so I guess it becomes a little more difficult

modest jetty
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that is the nicety of a smart meter. the reader i am waiting for has a small battery that it charges from the measly 100ma the meter can provide so it has power to offer a http dashboard as well as mqtt messaging without any extra power source.

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i know there are companies that offer optical readers that just snap pictures of the display on supported meters and use a cloud service to convert to text. but again you would need an outlet nearby

halcyon juniper
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I have an ISKRA meter and i read out the energy consumption with an infrared sensor

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What model do you have?

halcyon juniper
modest jetty
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wow! it has ir port? what do you get from it?

slow star
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Yeah for some reason smart meters haven't been rolled out here in Northern Ireland.

Yep no outlets and I'm guessing it's not the easiest to add one right beside the main feed and I'm not sure how difficult it would be to add some sort of socket beside my fuse box (weirdly it's up high in my WC so potentially not legal either)

modest jetty
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run wires from your fuse box back to the inlet and get your electrician to hook up an outlet by your intake that gets power from the right place?

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looking at your picture there may not be a pipe there to just pull extra wires through.

slow star
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Yeah might be difficult to do so fusebox isn't close to the inlet either, opposite side of the house nearly which is odd

viral plaza
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You could use Glow - with a decently sized battery pack it's got a couple of weeks off battery life if you can't get power into the meter box

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You can get much better life if you custom build something using zigbee and the low power processor on an esp32 - then you can get a few years off some AAs

wintry basalt
modest jetty
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that is exactly the kind of thing i mentioned in my first answer. with clamps around the wires to measure the current. nice ready-made product so there is little hardware diy involved at least. just solder in some connections to be able to flash the new firmware. you would probably need an electrician to connect it to mains, but it seems to be made to be hardwired. as long as your intake only connects down to one fuse box you should be able to get the intake current as well as any other circuits you want to monitor in one place. you don't need anything at the intake itself.

modest jetty
dawn gull
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Ready made solution could be a shelly EM and a clamp on the feed in to your fusebox. ( should probably get an electrician to add the clamp) you could extend the clamp cable with twisted pair cat5/cat6 cable and route to a adjacent location that has a socket ...

modest jetty
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as long as the clamps are the kind that can be opened to install them over a wire you can probably legally diy, but remember that when working on your main input feed the intake fuse is very high amperage. make sure you know what you are doing.

clamps that cannot be opened may be more accurate, but definitely need a qualified electrician to get the mains wires passed through

thick osprey
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Is the iotawatt gone?

hasty tusk
slow star
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Is there any way I could do anything here? I see shelly do some that might work?

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valid stream
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if it helps, the thing you may want to search for is "split core current transformer" and then you can snap those on around the service wires and read each phase (assuming you have more than one, or just the one if you have one)