Electrical Energy Usage Monitoring

Real time XML data from the TED unit is finally available from the Internet. In a previous post I indicated that the next task in this project was to get the TED unit online. The output from the unit is available here. For the time being I will not require authenticated access, I hope I don't regret this decision. I can see a number of scenarios where this information could be misused. Getting the TED unit working proved to be a challenge for a number of reasons.

• The software requires Windows XP, and it was a constant struggle trying to keep it running. I think I have found a laptop that keeps on running for a few days at a time. It would be very good to port the application to Solaris.
• I had to plug the TED unit in close to the power supply since I have several panels and the signals were not traversing them. In order to make this work, I had to use an RS-232 to Ethernet converter, the Moxa works well. I was very happy with software from TED. It provides quite a few views into the data.

Over the next few weeks I am going to collect data and develop some web interfaces, and provide support for some web services.

Posted at 04:08PM Jul 28, 2008 by rinaldo in Gadgets, Experiments  | 

Understanding Your Energy Consumption

Consumption of gas, electric and water by consumers, may decrease, if users are made aware of their consumption. This article discusses some techniques for real-time measuring of electrical usage. There are many different types of electric meters for monitoring electrical usage. These meters usually record the time in kilowatt-hours (kWh). Utilities typically charge for used kWh. This article discusses techniques for measuring electrical usage when you have uncooperative governments and utility companies or have the funding to buy and or design monitoring units. More information is available in the following pdf file. I would like to see if I can reduce my gas, electrical and water consumption by 25%. I have a well for water. I would like to understand how much things I do around the house cost. The current plan is to use the "The Energy Detective", TED unit TED, to capture data and then mine that data for information. I am getting my TED updated so that I can talk to it over a serial port. It would be nice if it was wireless. I may look into a SunSpot solution later. I have not found a cheap 25.00 part that takes serial or other connection types and converts it to some useful wireless transport. I will update this when my upgraded TED unit comes back and I have it available on the Internet. The next posting will include some detail on how I wrapped the TED with a REST interface, the MySQL schema and some mashup for getting temperatures and humidity values around the house and outside.

Posted at 10:45AM Feb 09, 2008 by rinaldo in Gadgets, Experiments  |  Comments[1]