Okay, I haven't talked about it much, but if you are going to do Solar PV panels , you need to have a good understand of what you use the electric power for. This lets you know if you can, say, run the well water pump and the electric dryer at the same time or not. It also helps you figure out what the "emergency draw" is - how much you need in reserve to keep a freezer running etc. To do this sort of calculation you really can look at the wattage rating of the appliance, andit will let you know ( nominally) how much power it will take -- but real usage can spike and fall. And right now, with this new house, I am getting bills for over 2000 KWH an MONTH. That is huge. I would need a 13000 Watt array to power that. An array that size would make be a "power provider" and eliminate me from Net Metering and other helpful programs. So I need to get usage down. I have been doing the obvious - replacing incandescent lights with LED has a dramatic effect on usage. But alas, I am not having enough of an effect, and I don't know what systems are causing it. I might even have some load that is broken, using power with a short across a decent resistance, and not doing anything useful with it -- But how to find it ...
The answer is with an individual circuit power meter. Looked at the options and settled on
this one -- its a pretty open solution - allowing 3rd party data access, IP capable, and expandable, all while retaining a price that is reasonable in comparison with other solutions ( but still not "cheap".. Ordering it today and I will report back, but I like it. It seems to have been done right, and eventually I may be able to add it into the generic monitoring system I want to write...
