Reading your homes electrical power meter?

[blueroomelectronics]

There are several devices (here's one) **broken link removed**
These devices transmit your meter readings wirelessly to a handheld readout (some have USB too). I've read through the installation PDF and wonder if it's really just a simple blinking LED for every kWh used? I'll have to look at my meter (when I get home) to see if there is a datasheet for it but is it really that simple?

 

[Torben]

There are several devices (here's one) **broken link removed**
These devices transmit your meter readings wirelessly to a handheld readout (some have USB too). I've read through the installation PDF and wonder if it's really just a simple blinking LED for every kWh used? I'll have to look at my meter (when I get home) to see if there is a datasheet for it but is it really that simple?

Hi Bill,

Yes, it's that simple. Not necessarily the 1 pulse:1 kWh ratio, but the idea. I've mostly worked with industrial metering where the multipliers are higher, but I'd imagine that for home use a multiplier of 1 would work fine. It should say on the meter though. If not, someone at the utility should be able to tell you for certain what is used where you are. A multiplier of 1 wouldn't surprise me for residential (but again, I'm not an expert on home metering).


Regards,

Torben

 

[blueroomelectronics]

We have a new Hydro One meter on the house. I wonder if the pulse is IR or visible? Now I'll have to design a simple low power pulse counter and transmitter. I'd love to keep track of the meter. All part of a home control & automation project I've had on the back burner for years.

 

[audioguru]

My neighbour and I got "Smart Meters" at exactly the same time. The power was turned off for only 3 seconds.
Now hers reads double the amount of electrical consumption as mine.
She lives alone and wastes as much electricity as she can.
My wife and I save as much electricity as we can.

 

[blueroomelectronics]

Did you get one of the 30,000 free remote meter monitors from Hydro One? (I wish I knew I would have applied) Do you remotely monitor it or just read your power bill?
I'd like to make the house as efficient as I can. Would also make a fun project and something to eventually hook into a "home server".

I recall something about peak power costing more than off peak, will that ever be applied?

I wonder how they installed it in 3 seconds.

 

[audioguru]

My new Smart meter has an LCD display but its clock shows 8888. I asked my electrical utility when will it become "smart" and they said next year after everybody has one. Then I can save by doing high electrical consumption things late at night when the rates will cost less.

I don't have a remote monitor for it.

It has a little sensor or IR LED that I can see on its front.

 

[blueroomelectronics]

I wonder how they plan to set the clock? RF over power cables maybe?

Are we (GTA) switching to off peak rate reduction next year?

PS Audioguru would you be interested in a remote monitor for your PC?

 

[tcmtech]

I picked up about 50 old wattmeters at a junk yard about 6 years ago($1 each! and all the different amps, volts,and phase styles I could ever need). The local power company was switching to all remote read meters and was just scrapping the old ones. I have at least 15 different manufatures in the lot. Every standard 120/240 200 amp of each manufaturer I have played with runs that black bar on the spinner past at a different rate. But they all read the correct KWH at the dials and numbers.
The one remote wattmeter reading device I looked at used an IR LED and sensor and just watched for when the black bar went by. No forward or reverse sensing that I was aware of. I did not get a look at the instructions though, so I do not know if there was calibration settings to make the bar count acurate or not.

 

[Super_voip]

We had a meter installed as part of a government inititive, a Clipsal cent-a-meter, use 433MHz to send info to a LCD panel. As we have 3 phase they installed 3 sensors, gave us spare compact fluros all for $50. the cent-a-meter with 2 additional sensors would have cost me $200. I'll look at the 433MHz signal one day

 

[audioguru]

Hi Bill,I don't need a remote monitor for my electric meter, thanks anyway.

 

[Super_voip]

Blueroom, have you looked at www.bwired.nl , slightly crazy

 

[Hero999]

Well I've measured the current consumption of everything in the house before.

I put a clamp meter on the the live cable going into the meter.

If I were to design something like this, I'd use a hall effect transducer to measure the current at read the voltage straight from the mains.. I wouldn't be breaking the law because the only connection to the mains would be after the meter.

 

[blueroomelectronics]

I have no intention to crack open the meter, I simply wanted to count / transmit the optical pulses displayed on the meter front. It would appear to be 480 pulses per kW.