2010-01-20
Electricity Monitor
So I got my E2 Electricity Monitor the other day and hooked it up. The actual work took less then 5 minutes (although it took me 2 days to find some time to go buy bateries - 3x AA and 3x AAA bateries are required).
So I've collected data for a little over 24 hours now and here is a first look at the results:
As you can see, pretty easy to understand. It does however not tell the whole story...
The mobile unit is very handy in that you can easily cary it around to measure specific appliance electricity usage. The monitor receives data every 6 seconds so when you switch on or off an appliance you will quickly see the watts climb or drop and the difference is obviously the the amount of watts that particular appliance draws.
On the graph you see a spike of around 2.7KWh but the truth is that at peak I measured about 4.7KWh with the geyser running and a kettle boiling water (a likely scenario). Also note that I can manually switch my geyser on with the new control unit I had installed with the solar geyser.
The average peak however is much lower, since it measures consumption over the hour and the kettle (as an example) boils water within 5 minutes.
Still, knowing what I know now I have come to the following short term conclusions:
So I've collected data for a little over 24 hours now and here is a first look at the results:
As you can see, pretty easy to understand. It does however not tell the whole story...
The mobile unit is very handy in that you can easily cary it around to measure specific appliance electricity usage. The monitor receives data every 6 seconds so when you switch on or off an appliance you will quickly see the watts climb or drop and the difference is obviously the the amount of watts that particular appliance draws.
On the graph you see a spike of around 2.7KWh but the truth is that at peak I measured about 4.7KWh with the geyser running and a kettle boiling water (a likely scenario). Also note that I can manually switch my geyser on with the new control unit I had installed with the solar geyser.
The average peak however is much lower, since it measures consumption over the hour and the kettle (as an example) boils water within 5 minutes.
Still, knowing what I know now I have come to the following short term conclusions:
- My true electricity usage peak is around 5 KWh (max) - this will help me a lot when deciding on a pure solar energy solution later in the year. I first have to get more data, especially during winter, before I can accurately size a solar solution.
- Over the next couple of days I can learn what a typical "work day" and a typical week-end looks like. This will allow me to budget more accurately for my actual electricity consumption
- I think this will go a long way to settle disputes with the municipality - but that remains to be seen :-)
- I can also now look at ways to save electricity, but without waiting for the end of the month's electricity bill - the results should be available within a day or two.
