Re: Measuring my electricity consumption.....

["David Chapman" <david@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Somebody (else) asked about this earlier on Selfbuild, this is my reply:

Warning - Anorak moment...

I've been monitoring electricity usage here for about a year and logging
results to a PC (Excel spreadsheet) very interesting - I can even tell how
much water is in the kettle by looking at the time the extra 11 amps is
used !

It is simple to do - I put a portable clamp meter around one of the meter
tails before it reaches the CU. Clamp meters normally work off a PP3 which
would only last a day or so if left on all the time so instead I power it
by a big 9V lead acid which lasts months. The output is good old RS232 into
a PC that is on all the time and the meter comes with software which takes
the data stream and writes it as a CSV file every 10 seconds.

This was going to be a temporary solution but I would miss it now so will
make it permanent.

There is another way - Hager do a range of CUs with the meters built it,
they are really designed for small commercial use but no reason why you
couldn't fit one at home ( I know somebody who has) only problem is they
are expensive (and a bit big and ugly)

David C




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