Any products to monitor electric usage via a network?

I came across this little device from Energy Monitoring.  It's called the EM-2500.  It's a whole house energy monitor that can display the electricity used in either kWh or in dollars.  Looks like it costs $215.

Hi Kirk,

Any progress on the project - web site?

 

İf so İ would be interested to see it.

 

Russ

Toshiba FA System Co., Ltd. in Japan has applied a patent for a system they developed.

 

The system collects power consumption of different part of factory, and send data to central system for real time display. I don't know if they design a product for consumers.

 

 

Not to sound to dumb or anything..but this is something I've seen in the movies, and it sounds like something that is on the market these days.

And not to be funny, but somebody like Bill Gates probably has a system of that sort. 

In my research I have come across the following:
1. Veris      www.veris.com - nice units - the h663 seems easiest to use in a retrofit
2. Satec    www.satec.co.il model bfm136
3. Schneider  www.powerlogic.com - haven't yet seen a price
4. RFX      www.rfxcom.com  - rf units - nice but expensive - around 110 USD per circuit
5. Plugwise  www.plugwise.com - switching units at about 40 USD per plug.
6. Trend Point  www.trendpoint.com - similar to Veris but don't sell to private customers overseas
7. Obvius  www.obvius.com - similar to Veris
8. Lem    www.lem.com  - rf units look good but I haven't seen the cost
9. Kondra    www.kondra.com/circuit/circuit.html  - A system made based on the Veris board and Trendpoint software
10. Klein has installed a Trendpoint unit    www.klein.com/thermd/enersure.shtml - interesting

Dr Edward Cheung  www.edcheung.com  - a NASA engineer who is apparently an electronics whiz has good information on his site about building your own but I certainly don't have that ability. 

I just keep doing research on the matter and by the time I have the cash in have plus permission from the boss I hope to have found something at least a little bit cost effective and have the selection made.

Have a nice day,
Russ Bailey
 

Hi Russ Bailey,

 

It seems that you are a good researcher...

I wonder if you have seen devices that manage and reduce electricity consumption???

 

Regards,

Hayel Msherbash

The metering devices refered to are toys - and expensive ones for that matter.

 

Proabaly the best known piece of equipment to conserve electricity to date is the finger. One uses it to:

1. turn down thermostat

2. push to on button on TV's, computers etc when wanting to use them

3. follow words when they read - instead of driving for example

4. turn down the water heater temperature

5. dial a number to have someone come insulate the attic, water heater etc.

6. click the x (on the mouse) to get rid of many sites which tell you how wonderful residential wind power, residential PV power etc are. It is wonderful but mainly for the supplier as cost effective it rarely is.

7. click the mouse button to find sites to learn more about what is paractical to do for the whole GW thing.

8. click the mouse button on the little x for sites which offer to let any Tom, Dick or Harry (Jane, June or Jill) write for them. 

take a look at the TED

http://www.theenergydetective.com/what/overview.html

TED is a whole house meter - fine for what it is. If you want to see what is causing a spike in useage or what individual unit consumptions are you have to run around sutting everything off and take readings.

 

There are a number of this type available - see www.powermeterstore.com

Russ

My compliments to your reply. Why is it that we want technical solutions, and so seldom are willing to make the effort to do the simple things.

Can I add "hop out the shower a minute sooner each day"

Seriously, you can look at the work we have been doing on Computer energy saving. The solutions are almost all in the doing, the technology simply costs money, expends carbon in manufacture, and does little to address the issue.

http://open4energy.com/forum/grn/msr/energy_measuring_watts_up_09071445

It seems we want an automated litter picker upper, rather than to stop throwing it on the floor?

 Hi open4energy,

Welcome to the Green Home Huddler!

The article the link leads to is informative and good and details the fallacy of blindly following along.

I have found that simple and untrue or incorrect stories can gain fantastic credibility on the net. Most of the 'new' power sources, the Maglev Wind Turbine for one, get people all excited and posting comments about how wonderful! The next two years nothing more has been heard of the Maglev Turbine - wonder why? There will be a few good ones come through but 99%+ will just go away.

I like the story about the Kill-a Watt and the accuracy - plugged by someone who hadn't tried it.

Sometime back I took my amp meter (not an expensive one) and started an energy survey. I found out that certain items, though turned on and operating, seemed to be magically not using any power.

As one might guess, I soon figured out that my cheap amp meter was not accurate in the lower range. When I have extra bucks I will be buying a new meter from Fluke or some company like that. My cheap meter was carbon spent for nothing!

The minute less in the shower is one of the tried, true and easy power savers! 

Thanks open4energy!

After rereading the post by open4energy I spent more time on their site and found good articles and the following link. The link is to the lbl site and gives ranges of power consumption for many household and office items.

The horrible cell phone charge is the smallest offender of all it would seem.

http://standby.lbl.gov/summary-chart.html

Greetings all from open4energy

Two things to this thread.

1) We have been updating our list home energy monitors. There are more than 40 of them now!

http://open4energy.com/technology/list_home_energy_monitor

If you are looking to monitor a single circuit, I would take a look at the wattsup SC20 - It is what we use for circuit monitoring, and offers the ability to be remotely switched. It is in the list of energy saving devices - it monitors and can be used to action savings.

http://open4energy.com/technology/home_energy_saving_devices

2) There are a number of nasty energy saving scams doing the rounds.

We have built a directory of them - please check it out and do not let them get you!

http://open4energy.com/forum/home/scam/energy_saving_scams

We have also been doing some work to build a custom search directory NESH (NO Energy Scams Here) - it does not have all the information on the web, but it does have only good information.

We will be adding sections of this forum to the directory of sites included in the content!

Finally, if you add open4energy to any search terms you enter - e.g. "open4energy diy solar" - the top results will include our reviews on the topic.

Excellent post and full of information for all.

The scam section seems to have all the names İ know and more. There are too many thieves out there today looking to take advantage of anyone who hasn't done their homework! 

open4energy
Nice web-site. I like the direction you're taken. Your web-site will be useful to me.

I run a small electric utility (reseller), and am passionate about energy conservation, both in my own home, as well as the facilities who's energy I manage at Panorama www.panoramaresort.com

We perform in-house energy audits using a multi-channel energy logger from Dent Instruments www.dentinstruments.com/ . This is an excellent tool. With the results, I can generate an accurate pie-chart of a building's energy consumption. Then focus 1st on the identified major use element (usually heat & A/C)

Log heating/cooling over a week. I use a set of temperature data-loggers from logtag www.logtagrecorders.com/ . These are very useful in illuminating peoples habits with regard to the largest elements of home energy consumption.

Mitch Thornton

Not much happening in this forum lately -- This is a shame because this is the head of energy conservation.  You would not start a diet without a scale, you cannot know if you are making real progress on reducing your energy consumption unless you can measure it.

 

I'll add three links I've found interesting:

 

Hobo Data loggers - perhaps the most complete solution available, track electric use per circuit, flow (water, gas), temperature, wind, rain fall, barometric - as many channels as you want to pay for (and these are not cheap - but not toys)

http://www.onsetcomp.com/data-logger-2

 

People Power - These guys have an idea that if you make the monitor cheap enough you can put it into everything.  They are selling a monitor and have an open source network solution to transfer the information.  But it does not appear to be an out of the box solution yet

http://www.peoplepowerco.com/

 

FrankF - (me) my personal blog were I documented a hot water monitoring system I built myself very cheaply although it was not easy and is not "full of functionality"  Still if you find it interesting I would happily share my work with you.

http://www.frankf.us/wp/?p=34

This system seems quite nice. It not only monitors the electric usage, but also can remotely control all the appliances in the system.

http://www.sailwider-smartpower.com/bi_directional_energy_saving_management.htm

Edited by meek-rick - 5/4/11 at 8:15am