Sub-Meter Electricity Monitoring

[chris_j_hunter]

Gumby got a group of us together a little over a year ago & bulk-bought an Eltako unit (32A 1-DIN, IIRC) ...

[Gumby]

Hi Doug

The DIN mount units were Eltako and sourced from Rayleigh Instruments. The bulk buy led to a significant discount. There were a lot of Chinese made energy meters around as well, but I guess we all shied away from the somewhat unknown provenance.


Possible altenatives to search for:
Eltako WSZ12B-32A, EVA12-32A, EWZ12E-32A, WSZ12E-32A
INEPRO ADM1TE, ADM1D, ADM1.5TE, ADM1LCD
Saia-Burgess ALD1D5F10KA2A00
Microcustom MD25
Chinese Clones (maybe) PRO1TE, DRM100?
Carlo Gavazzi EM10, EM11
SongYang SY1015
YTL DDS-1Y-18L


Possible Suppliers:
Stephen Wales
MeterManager
SHMcomms
PJW
MeterMaid
JWInstruments
Procuro


Some suppliers didn't even respond to my enquiries...
The INEPRO ones were the cheapest and most widely available at around £20.


HTH.

[djgrah]

Thanks Gumby,
I'll get looking!

Doug

[RichardC]

Thanks Gumby,
I'll get looking!

Doug

I have had 12 meters from a German company.

I first spoke about these in thread - http://www.automatedhome.co.uk/vbull...0774#post10774

I've just followed the link in the origional post and it's broken now try http://www.top-messtechnik.com/jtlsh...a=475&lang=eng

I origionally got a couple of these which are rated at 32A max current, I also got a meter from Steven Wales which is rated at 45A for a shower feed. I then checked accuracy of the meters against a calibrated meter.

http://www.automatedhome.co.uk/vbull...?t=2217&page=6

They feed into Cortex, want to develop this further, I am also measureing Gas but all the work on Cortex is a bit stalled at the moment with loads of building work needing to be done on the refurb of our house.

Cheers

Rich

[djgrah]

Thanks Rich,
I stumbled across the German meters which look good. I seem to have found the key to finding these things on the internet is to search for marine or caravan electrical suppliers. I guess they are used a lot for electric hookups etc.
I had a chat with the electricians doing our house about fitting them, while they were quite happy to do so they did warn me I would need 8 if I wanted to monitor all the ring mains and lighting circuits! They suggested a more cost effective solution would be to buy a second hand wall mount electric meter and monitor the whole house at once. For circa £15 it sounded like a good idea!
Doug

[RichardC]

I had a chat with the electricians doing our house about fitting them, while they were quite happy to do so they did warn me I would need 8 if I wanted to monitor all the ring mains and lighting circuits! They suggested a more cost effective solution would be to buy a second hand wall mount electric meter and monitor the whole house at once. For circa £15 it sounded like a good idea!
Doug

Well if it helps, I have 15 of these meters. I have two lighting circuits and two power circuits for each floor of the house. Its a two story house. I also monitor elec going to the 5kw UPS for the servers and AV gear. The elec shower, cooker and other home automation kit inc Idratek kit are also on seperate meters.

I also have two calibrated electronic meters to measure the mains feeder and another for a furture feed for PV panels on the house to measure imports from that system. These also measure PF and THD which are not important from a domestic point of view.

With the gas meter I have an good idea of all the computing, lighting, heating and cooking etc costs of the house. (This is sometimes not a good idea, but does help or hinder in the discussion with SWMBO as to how much elec "my" servers take etc! - soon I should have the money for a new WHS system)

To fit the meters and also to provide seperation from the hosue CU I fed all the circuits into a seperate CU where the meters and the Idratek modules monitor the pulses from the various meters.

Hope that provides some inspiration

[toscal]

Thanks Rich,
I stumbled across the German meters which look good. I seem to have found the key to finding these things on the internet is to search for marine or caravan electrical suppliers. I guess they are used a lot for electric hookups etc.
I had a chat with the electricians doing our house about fitting them, while they were quite happy to do so they did warn me I would need 8 if I wanted to monitor all the ring mains and lighting circuits! They suggested a more cost effective solution would be to buy a second hand wall mount electric meter and monitor the whole house at once. For circa £15 it sounded like a good idea!
Doug

But if you only have one meter then it makes it harder to see what is the largest consumer of electricity. Where as the 8 individual ones would give you a better idea which circuit the largest consumer is on. Though this could vary at different times of the day.

[chris_j_hunter]

any updates on this ...

it's a while since we all bought ...

some of ours have stopped working ...

not sure why - the units or the contacts ??

either way, wish we'd bought more ...

data is good !

ie: makes things visible ...

whatever ... we're looking to buy some more power meters / pulse counters ...

only ... Googling brings prices that do not encourage ...

Chris

PS: this thread looks to have scored the most views - way more than any other ... implying we're not alone ...

[Karam]

How about these: SDM120D or DDS353, or are these not the type you are looking for?

[chris_j_hunter]

many thanks ...

some Googling with those found one that was at a better price & was even MID approved - SDM120-DB-MID