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What's that touchscreen in my room?

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Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#501

Post by robinsonb5 »

nkurz wrote: post #493
Symbiote wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's very high. Has a neighbour plugged their car into your outside socket? Underfloor electric heating in the bathroom? Someone using that minisplit more than you think? Average monthly use a house like that in Britain is 225kWh. https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/information-consumers/energy-advice...

Interesting numbers. My first instinct was that you might be reading it wrong, but you seem to be completely correct. The average use for the US is usually claimed to be about 4x that at 880kWh/month: https://www.energybot.com/blog/average-energy-consumption.ht... I think the main difference is the prevalence of electric heating and cooling in different countries. We have a ~1400 sq ft old house in Vermont with wood…

Multi-rate is when energy's cheaper during off-peak hours - traditionally used with night storage heaters, which is why the average usage would be higher; it's more likely to be used where gas isn't available.

"Economy 7" has existed for decades, and allows a sub-circuit of the house to be energised only between roughly midnight and 7am (with an offset for each house to avoid the grid collapsing when 10 million storage heaters turn on simultaneously!)

Typically the cheap rate energy would be between a half and a third of the day-rate energy.

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#502

Post by robinsonb5 »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #451
gambiting wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uhm. We have a 3 bed semi detached house, my consumption for November was 1267kWh of electricity. In October it was 1148kWh. And I also heat with gas(well we have a minisplit upstairs that we sometimes use for heat, but it uses like 5kWh/day max) No idea how you use so little lol.

We vs I makes all the difference. We (2 adults, 2 seniors, 2 small kids) blow thru 350-400 kWh on hot water alone. Another 500-600 kwh on car. Remaining 300-400kwh is cooking, lighting, tech, etc. Same average 1200kwh per month. Take the car away and it's same 175kwh per month per person (summer here so no heating needed).

It does indeed. Also I use gas for both hot water and cooking - and keep the ambient temperature relatively low, so the fridge and freezer aren't fighting the heating.

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#503

Post by kabes »

alkonaut wrote: post #299
teekert wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree fully, I believe that my Home Assistant energy dashboard has done more for our energy consumption than any other measure. If you’re in the Netherland you can get something like a “slimme lezer”, plug it into the p1 port of your energy meter and it will pop up in Home Assistant with the right sensors. The energy dashboard will give an overview of your gas and electricity usage, solar production, proportion use…

> If you’re in the Netherland you can get something like a “slimme lezer”, plug it into the p1 port of your energy meter and it will pop up in Home Assistant with the right sensors. If only the meters had ny power nearby or offered a 5V USB port on it so you could plug in your reader and forget it. But no. Now I'd have to keep a small Li-ion battery living in -20C since the meters are typically outside and there is n…

The slimme lezer is powered by the p1 port

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#504

Post by kabes »

b112 wrote: post #453
quickthrowman wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not utility infrastructure. It’s a submeter connected to a set of current transformers. In general in the US, for commercial buildings, everything beyond the utility transformer secondary is the responsibility of the customer. For a residence, anything beyond the meter socket is the responsibility of the customer. I’m unfamiliar with UK utility standards though so perhaps it’s different there.

Weird. You have a meter, after the utility's meter, that you can just plug into?

At least in the netherlands and belgium, the meter is from the utility company, but comes with a public serial port (the so called P1 port) to read the data for smart home purposes.

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#505

Post by camtarn »

Heh, small world. They were briefly a client of ours back when I joined my current company in 2015. We were hired to develop a prototype PLC-based energy monitoring system for a cafe, based on the idea of profiling various devices' energy usage (and maybe mains harmonics?) so you could tell which devices were switching on and off. The project was already underway when I joined, so my involvement was limited to drilling some holes in enclosures.

I never really heard anything more from them after the project was complete. Interesting to see what else they did.

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#506

Post by HPsquared »

jonathanlydall wrote: post #128

A few years ago I came to the realisation that if you want people to be more environmentally conscious or economical in terms of utility consumption, (electricity, water, gas, etc), they need far better data than a single figure per month. You want to be able to see usage to a resolution of at most 5 minutes. That way people can spot things like “having my electric heater on for those couple of hours used more electr…

Instead of a single usage figure per month, it should be a cumulative line chart with high resolution, preferably zoomable. The customer would see long periods of almost nothing, and occasional big jumps (e.g. When the heater is on).

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#507

Post by quickthrowman »

b112 wrote: post #453
quickthrowman wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not utility infrastructure. It’s a submeter connected to a set of current transformers. In general in the US, for commercial buildings, everything beyond the utility transformer secondary is the responsibility of the customer. For a residence, anything beyond the meter socket is the responsibility of the customer. I’m unfamiliar with UK utility standards though so perhaps it’s different there.

Weird. You have a meter, after the utility's meter, that you can just plug into?

Not by default, but tenant submeters are something you can install in your own premises wiring. Here’s an example, a single-phase meter made by Honeywell: https://prod-edam.honeywell.com/content/dam/honeywell-edam/h...

The linked example only monitors one circuit, but you could buy a submeter than can monitor multiple current transformers/multiple circuits.

The utility meter is supplied by the utility and used to bill you, an optional submeter is just for your own monitoring and tracking of electrical use.

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#508

Post by masklinn »

Symbiote wrote: post #465
lazide wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, you might want to reconsider who you’re talking to. I’ve run 40 amp 240v split phase and 3 phase in North America (permitted) for personal projects. I’m well aware. No one installs L30R/L6-30R receptacles in the US for ‘normal’ (as in used by a human for random stuff) use as standard practice, because yes - most of the time no one needs it. Maximum power for a normal 120/20 amp branch circuit is 2.4kw, and that’s…

"Normal" high power portable devices in Europe are 2-3kW electric heaters (generally an expensive way to heat a house, but OK if you're heating a single room) and older and less efficient vacuum cleaners (2kW). Maybe also a very high spec gaming PC, which here could run (monitors and all) from a single outlet. Would tripping the breaker have been a concern at a 2000s LAN party in the USA? I have no idea. In some coun…

> In some countries it's common to have a 400V (3 phase) socket in the garage.

And the kitchen, for electric ranges.

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#509

Post by jonathanlydall »

HPsquared wrote: post #506
jonathanlydall wrote: post #128

A few years ago I came to the realisation that if you want people to be more environmentally conscious or economical in terms of utility consumption, (electricity, water, gas, etc), they need far better data than a single figure per month. You want to be able to see usage to a resolution of at most 5 minutes. That way people can spot things like “having my electric heater on for those couple of hours used more electr…

Instead of a single usage figure per month, it should be a cumulative line chart with high resolution, preferably zoomable. The customer would see long periods of almost nothing, and occasional big jumps (e.g. When the heater is on).

Exactly.

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#510

Post by runamok »

andirk wrote: post #418
runamok wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SDGE started breaking down our energy usage by "type" a few months ago. Not exactly sure how but they can categorize things as laundry, lights, entertainment, computers, always on, etc. There are some screenshots here that kind of give you the idea: https://www.sdge.com/energy-management-tool

My PGE (Bay area) does the same but I'm pretty sure it's an estimate according to house size, # of people, and a questionnaire I filled out such as "how many times do you run the dishwasher per week". Your house pulls electricity through the breaker box or doesn't. Then again, it's possible different appliances have a specific electrical signatures like +5KWH x 1.5 hours = dishwasher.

I was on mobile and unable to find it but here it is: https://sdge.bidgely.com/dashboard/faqs

How does it work? Magic? Not really. Each appliance uses electricity in a unique manner - think of it like an appliance fingerprint. We detect and extract these "fingerprints" and convert the data into useful insights and recommendations.

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