[HN Gopher] Analyzing my electricity consumption
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Analyzing my electricity consumption
Author : skadamat
Score : 142 points
Date : 2024-07-03 18:04 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (zdimension.fr)
(TXT) w3m dump (zdimension.fr)
| CharlesW wrote:
| Question for experts: I'm on SDG&E (North County San Diego) and
| apparently have a smart meter that supports HAN at 900 MHz, but
| at the end of last year SDG&E declared "no new devices [HAN
| devices] can be connected". Does this mean that if I want to
| monitor my electricity use that I'm out of luck?
| minitoar wrote:
| That was just for local real-time monitoring iirc, using eg an
| Emporia Vue. I think you can still get the data from their
| website.
| CharlesW wrote:
| SDG&E supports "Green Button" downloads, but I wonder how
| long that will last -- the links in the "Apps" section of
| https://www.energy.gov/data/green-button are dead, the
| official GitHub repo and Green Button Alliance repo appear to
| have gone into a coma around 2015, and Wikipedia doesn't have
| an entry for it.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| > the organization managing the national French power grid
| (Enedis) has been in the process of replacing the legacy "dumb"
| electricity meters by "smart" meters, known under the brand name
| "Linky"
|
| My jurisdiction, Ontario Canada, mass implemented these and found
| that people didn't really shift their peak demand use much and
| it's debatable if the amount spent was worth it. Costs just as
| much to implement for light users but they're diminishing returns
| for any habit changes.
|
| https://www.auditor.on.ca/en/content/annualreports/arreports...
|
| Also went all-in on submetering small units like
| condominiums+apartments where there's not much tenant/occupant
| ability to control their usage/equipment. If anything, just
| further encourages owners/builders to install the poorest
| efficiency stuff since they're not paying the usage bill.
|
| Not surprising that other tactics are more effective (dirt cheap
| LEDs, renovation programs, improving appliance efficiency... my
| TV and computers use a fraction of what they used to, wall warts
| are all SMPS now).
|
| Still can't find a "smart fridge" that runs in ultra-chill mode
| when rates are cheap and backs off when they're high. Kinda
| antithetical to use more electricity to save but it's true.
|
| I really wish they could push the telecoms to focus on CPE
| efficiency since I'm forced to use their equipment.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| > Still can't find a "smart fridge" that runs in ultra-chill
| mode when rates are cheap and backs off when they're high.
| Kinda antithetical to use more electricity to save but it's
| true.
|
| It makes sense if you think of the thermal mass as a battery.
| Technology connections says he does that with his air
| conditioner, runs it hard overnight so it stays cold longer
| with less effort during the day
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| It being cold also tends to help with better sleep.
|
| We set our AC to 76 during most of the day, 80 during on-peak
| pricing, and 72 overnight.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > runs it hard overnight so it stays cold longer with less
| effort during the day
|
| Shouldn't it be the other way around? The days when
| electricity was cheaper at night are long gone.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Heat pumps are more efficient the smaller the temperature
| gradient is.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > The days when electricity was cheaper at night are long
| gone.
|
| That must be a regional thing. In the PNW, my power rate
| during most of the day is twice what it is at night, and
| during the evening peak it doubles again.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| It's still the case in Canada because our peak electricity
| usage is driven by summer daytime aircon and solar is a
| small percentage of generation.
|
| Heating is still primarily fossil fuel, for now.
|
| Night time loads are generally low with big baseload hydro
| and nuclear generation in the more populated
| states/provinces.
| infecto wrote:
| In what markets? In most/all of the markets I can think of,
| night time rates are still cheaper. Even in markets with
| large Solar installations (CA, USA) peak rates are still
| during the day.
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> Shouldn 't it be the other way around? The days when
| electricity was cheaper at night are long gone._
|
| Are they? Here in California most energy companies offer
| plans with much cheaper rates overnight for EV charging
| (i.e. $0.15 vs $0.45-$0.90 peak during the day).
|
| Commercial and industrial customers account for two thirds
| of power consumption so there's a lot of surplus generation
| at night. Lots of industrial users have agreements where
| the power company can signal them to soak up surplus power
| but that's also less effective at night when wind picks up.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| 2-4pm for me is about 6x the price of 2-4am. NYC.
| snthd wrote:
| https://fridge0.branchable.com/thermal_mass/
| goda90 wrote:
| Changing the temperature of a fridge based on electricity rates
| just feels like a bad idea. A lot of food can have its texture
| ruined by slow freezing (a common occurrence at the back of
| many fridges already) and waiting to get food down to the
| target temperature will just lead to bacterial growth.
| minitoar wrote:
| Most freezers already do a defrost cycle so could probably
| play with that. It's only a few degrees oscillation so idk
| how much savings you could get there.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| A modern fridge only consumes around 350kW a year or so, so
| any savings are going to be modest. It would not be the
| first target if I wanted to cut my power usage, especially
| if the consequence was going to be more freezer burn.
| minitoar wrote:
| I think the consequence would be less freezer burn and
| more frost buildup.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Seems like having an ultra-chill button for that function
| would help with that.
|
| Might want some phase-change materials to optimize the
| thermal banking.
|
| That's easier for a freezer (very salty water bottles) than a
| fridge (need some carefully produced waxes), but fridge
| contents should be more tolerant of temperature variability.
|
| Would add that refrigeration is more efficient at night when
| ambient temperatures are generally cooler and/or heating
| needs are greater, so the "ultra-chill overnight and daytime
| backoff" might not increase consumption.
| konfusinomicon wrote:
| the fast chill button is a thing. it's in both my 8yr old
| GE and my newer samsung..I never use it though but it's
| made for putting still warm leftovers in and getting them
| cold fast
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Need a thing to press that button 1/2 hour before peak
| rates take effect.
|
| But I wonder if it just circulates more air and the
| thermostat doesn't adjust its set points.
| kkfx wrote:
| These functions do not change fridge temperature, choose when
| to run the defrost functions for no-frost units (a quick wall
| heating to melt the ice and quickly came back to normal),
| choose to run or not some ancillary functions (like making
| ice cubes) etc. They are VERY chatty
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38984609 but not much
| useful.
|
| Shifting loads for hot water, if you have big enough
| reservoirs on contrary change MUCH the game, being able to
| shift some loads automatically, like leaving a dishwasher or
| a washing machines, a pumped irrigation systems and so on
| might significantly change the overall bill to makes
| investments in that sense meaningful.
| knappe wrote:
| This is the entire concept behind harvest.
|
| https://www.harvest-thermal.com/product
|
| A recent podcast turned me onto them. The idea is to heat
| water to higher temps than normal and use that extra heat
| as an energy store for use during peak times.
| kkfx wrote:
| I think is not a novel idea: there are various vendors
| here in EU that offer "thermodynamic VMCs", meaning dual-
| flux ventilation system [1] with a small heat-pump
| between the to air flows, sucking heat from the outgoing
| air, heating the incoming flow in winter, in summer to
| avoid injecting too humid water they passively exchange
| outgoing fresh air with the incoming and the heat a water
| tank for sanitary water, cooling as needed the incoming
| air after the passive exchange, for instance https://www.
| broferpura.it/en/products/Domestic/compact06.htm... this
| reduce the number of compressors a home need in mild
| climate and new homes.
|
| For me I simply run the main heat pump at full power
| during the day on p.v. reducing the grid absorption for
| some hours in winter and for sanitary water almost
| zeroing it since 300l @60-65 (140-149) suffice for a
| whole day, at least when I have enough p.v. a day after
| another.
|
| Honestly I doubt it's possible to store enough heat with
| current tech to compensate the home heating needs, it's
| possible for sanitary hot water (except for a swimming
| pool) but no more. However for mild climate for some
| months might be enough to significantly reduce the grid
| absorption. The sole issue here is that heat pumps now,
| without any specific reasons, have skyrocketed in retail
| price enough to make them far less convenient than just
| few years ago... So the economy is still not much.
|
| [1] an image should be sufficient, I do not know their
| common name in English, sorry https://lacentrale-
| eco.com/images/blog/fonctionnement-vmc-do...
| nawitus wrote:
| This is very standard stuff in Finland for decades. And
| before heat pumps became popular large tanks were common
| and those were heated during the night.
| saagarjha wrote:
| My fridge (some LG models supposedly does this. I say
| "supposedly" because this requires connecting to Wi-Fi, which I
| don't want to do, but in their the energy company sends it
| signals about how the grid is doing and the fridge goes into
| energy saver when appropriate.
| tills13 wrote:
| A nice little vlan with only internet access would let you
| connect your fridge to your WiFi without worry. Most WiFi +
| router combos come with a Guest vlan which already does this
| out of the box.
| konfusinomicon wrote:
| hesitant to wifi connect my fridge too but my elec provider
| offers a decent discount for setting it up.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Links? Didn't think that was a thing for fridges, just
| hvac/water heaters.
| martinald wrote:
| The real long term idea with smart metering isn't so much
| demand savings (though I think it was billed as that; and I
| agree the results are very underwhelming from everything I've
| seen), it's to start allowing dynamic energy tariffs and
| getting people incentivized to move load to cheaper times.
|
| We have some of them in the UK and you can see the price
| differences quite clearly: https://agileprices.co.uk/
|
| I think the idea of having one (or maybe a crude day/night)
| tariff is really antiquated now when wholesale prices swing so
| much because of renewables. We are getting to a place where
| electricity is going to be free/negative a lot of the time and
| very much more expensive for other time slots.
|
| However, I don't know how much consumers can do about this
| apart from buying batteries (which is a good thing). I don't
| think many people will start eating their dinner 3 hours
| earlier or later or do washing in the middle of the night to
| save a few dollars here and there. I suppose AC/heating would
| use enough that it would be worth turning it down at certain
| times of day.
|
| Really where all the money to be made here is being able to get
| cheap industrial processes that consumer a load of electricity
| that can be switched on and off, so only working 25% of the
| time. This is hard though because there is a lot of capex (and
| opex) to having equipment and people sitting around doing
| nothing when the price is too high. But I think the energy
| savings will be so great there will be something that comes
| along for this - potentially hydrogen electrolysis.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| > it's to start allowing dynamic energy tariffs and getting
| people incentivized to move load to cheaper times.
|
| That's what they rolled out with them, but insufficient
| change to habits.
|
| > I suppose AC/heating would use enough that it would be
| worth turning it down at certain times of day.
|
| This is generally the big win, and why they've had to still
| create a program to subsidize smart thermostats and payments
| to enable the back off features.
|
| Mass installing smart meters to incentivize the public at
| large to buy+install smarter thermostats is a less effective
| and more expensive strategy than giving the thermostats away
| and writing users a guaranteed cheque in exchange for
| remotely controlling it.
|
| (There are other dynamics at play: electricity here is
| generally cheap and I pay more in fixed charges than
| consumption and the heating side is almost universally fossil
| fuel/wood but that's achangin)
| IneffablePigeon wrote:
| I think electric cars could change this equation. The
| savings are high enough and the inconvenience low enough.
| kkfx wrote:
| The point is that 99% of the contracts have no "dynamic
| prices", they have few different tariffs established up front
| an year for the next. In this case you do not need a smart
| meter to shift load. You simply look at the "current year
| tariffs" and that's is. If we have dynamic prices than we
| need a standard data bus for every home appliance connectable
| to a personal automation or directly to the meter, without
| that manual load shifting is extremely limited.
|
| In France there is a VERY LIMITED system allow a two wire
| connection for big appliances were the meter simply tell
| "cheap or expensive" state and the appliance now that "now
| the electricity is cheaper, now more expensive". It's way too
| limited. New homes have since some years a mandatory mitering
| but without dynamic prices and made to be piloted and
| throttled loads it's just expensive eye candy stuff.
|
| Personally I have automated via HA as much as I can but such
| automation is essentially just switches HA can open or close
| via Shelly integration, there is no real smartness in all
| appliances even if it's damn cheap adding it from the initial
| design phase.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> The real long term idea with smart metering isn't so much
| demand savings (though I think it was billed as that; and I
| agree the results are very underwhelming from everything I've
| seen), it's to start allowing dynamic energy tariffs and
| getting people incentivized to move load to cheaper times.
|
| The original long/medium/short-term goal of "smart" meters
| was to eliminate the need to manually check meters and
| integrate that into the billing systems. It was a direct cost
| savings to delivery companies. All the fancy variable pricing
| stuff is an afterthought.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I phrase it as utilities got a gov-mandate to install you
| new stuff, pass on the cost to you, and save some
| monthly/bi-monthly opex cost that they can pocket
| themselves (or at least pat themselves on the back for).
|
| If it costs more than it saves, they don't mind, actually
| that's great (for them).
|
| In rural areas in Ontario, the system used 3G (and for some
| reason I think only supported 2G in the past) to send
| readings. So that will be another truck roll (or more
| likely, cheque to telecoms to keep up some old infra).
|
| I also suspicious of $$$ technical investments to reduce
| relatively small costs (especially ones where a lot of the
| dollars leave the area).
| mnahkies wrote:
| It also facilitates half hourly settlement. Previously we
| used standard profile curves based on the average household
| to attribute consumption to each 30 minute settlement
| period, where with smart meters sending half hourly reads
| you can settle based on the actual consumption.
|
| The transition period includes "elective half hourly
| settlement" which basically means that as a supplier you
| can selectively settle meters on a half hourly basis, which
| created an interesting (but time limited) arbitrage
| opportunity where you could do some data science to predict
| which meters would be beneficial to settle half hourly or
| not
|
| Refs - https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/energy-policy-and-
| regulation/policy...
|
| - https://www.elexon.co.uk/settlement/profiling/
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I'm a bit confused: why do they need visibility into
| individual household's load to accomplish this? Can't you
| just look at what the whole city is drawing and order
| based on that?
|
| Or do you mean fully dynamic pricing/billing to end
| users?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| My personal experience with "smart" thermostats is that my
| electric bill went up.
|
| By "smart" I just mean programmable. I had settings for
| morning, daytime (nobody home), evening, and night. It makes
| no sense but my total costs went up. This was years ago, so I
| don't remember exactly what temps I had set for the different
| times of day. Now I just set the A/C at 76 and leave it
| there.
| IneffablePigeon wrote:
| With heat pumps (like AC) and condensing boilers, it is
| often more efficient to run for longer and slower as long
| as that makes your appliance run more efficiently (lower
| flow temperatures for heating, higher for cooling).
| Requires the system to support modulation though.
| otherme123 wrote:
| Let me paint you a scenario where this is possible: you
| leave home at 9 AM, and the A/C stops. The house slowly
| gets hot, maybe 95degF. You plan to arrive at 9 PM, so you
| program the A/C to get the house to 76degF, which the thing
| thinks it can do in 1 hour at full blast. But the energy
| price between 8 PM and 9 PM is the highest of all day: you
| just programmed the A/C to the worst.
|
| Instead, now you leave it keeping 76degF, and the thing can
| do it working at 10%. You consume more energy at the end of
| the day, but the consumption is spreaded through the
| cheapest hours in the middle of the day, and only a small
| fraction of it is consumed in the expensive hours from 6 to
| 10 PM. This is how freezers work, cooling intermitently as
| the thermostate goes off limits.
|
| I would test if it is worthy money wise, not energy wise,
| to put the A/C at full blast in the cheapest hours. Say
| from 4 to 6 PM (the cheapest here in Spain), to get the
| house as cold as possible, and then try to play with A/C at
| maybe 5% letting it rise until reaching 76degF at 9 PM.
| baby_souffle wrote:
| > I would test if it is worthy money wise, not energy
| wise, to put the A/C at full blast in the cheapest hours.
| Say from 4 to 6 PM (the cheapest here in Spain), to get
| the house as cold as possible, and then try to play with
| A/C at maybe 5% letting it rise until reaching 76degF at
| 9 PM.
|
| Depending on how big the house is and how well insulated
| it is, it very well may make for a big thermal battery
| and this would work well.
|
| If small and/or poorly insulated or drafty then this will
| not work well.
| tomaskafka wrote:
| "apart from buying batteries" - that is imo precisely enough.
| We are nearing a time, where a battery that would flatten the
| avg household demand curve costs under $2000 (without
| installation costs), and that might be quite enough to change
| how electrical production works.
| martinald wrote:
| Yes, poorly worded from me. I meant more households can't
| really do a huge amount about load shifting without
| batteries. Not that batteries are a bad idea or not
| workable.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > Still can't find a "smart fridge" that runs in ultra-chill
| mode when rates are cheap and backs off when they're high.
|
| Yeah... That requires a standard way to communicate the energy
| price to the fridge. You won't get that with municipal
| regulation.
|
| And without devices auto-adjusting their behavior, you won't
| get a lot of savings.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| It could just be telling it what your time-of-use rates and
| hours are. I think most places with variable rates at this
| point are on a schedule that does not often change, only a
| few places have completely dynamic pricing that would need
| real time information from the grid operator.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Generally Time of Day electricity billing is just an average
| costing at fixed windows of time. 2-way (or really, just
| 1-way is actually necessary) comms not required.
|
| Not too common to have totally dynamic pricing. And even if
| you did, they have general trends.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Your fridge doesn't need to know energy prices. Fridges are
| for cooling, not computing your bills, and giving them access
| to too much data only encourages the usual IoT vendor abuse
| patterns. It should be enough for it to get a proxy signal.
| "Cheap tariff" / "expensive tariff". Or maybe continuous 0-1
| control signal. Optimizing energy use for household or
| building already requires an external decision-making center
| anyway.
| szundi wrote:
| Just buy a bit bigger one, and fill the unused space with
| water. Every open now exchanges less air and you can turn it
| off for hours or a day without any impact of the temperature
| inside - water is good capacitor of temperature.
| deeth_starr_v wrote:
| I get the feeling you are into food replacement shakes ;)
| infecto wrote:
| > Still can't find a "smart fridge" that runs in ultra-chill
| mode when rates are cheap and backs off when they're high.
| Kinda antithetical to use more electricity to save but it's
| true.
|
| I don't believe there would be many if any cost savings from
| doing this. The engineering thought behind it would cost more
| than the actual savings. It would make a lot more sense to buy
| a chest fridge which I imagine uses half or less the energy of
| a typical standing fridge.
| xnx wrote:
| The only estimates I've seen say 10-25 percent more
| efficient.
| infecto wrote:
| Department of Energy / EnergyStar state 50% energy savings
| for freezers. Freezer/fridge might not translate perfectly
| but I imagine a fridge is getting opened more often during
| the day which would skew that even more towards the chest
| being more efficient.
|
| Not sure how you come to 10%
| xnx wrote:
| Wow. That is a surprising number: "An ENERGY STAR
| certified chest freezer uses about 215 kWh of electricity
| and costs about $30 per year to run, while an ENERGY STAR
| certified upright freezer uses about 395 kWh of
| electricity and costs about $60 per year to run."
|
| https://www.energystar.gov/products/freezers
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| So save $30/year increase the price of repairs and the
| chance of it breaking.
| infecto wrote:
| How does a chest freezer/fridge have increased chances of
| repairs?
| bee_rider wrote:
| I mean it must have a downside because otherwise I'll
| have to admit I've made a mistake by not having one
| already.
| infecto wrote:
| The downside is it's a chest and does not fit any kitchen
| floor plan. You would need to purposefully put it in your
| plans.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| It's far more annoying to fetch something from the bottom
| of a chest freezer than it is to fetch it from the back
| of an upright freezer.
| shagie wrote:
| When you open the chest freezer, you don't have cold air
| "spilling" out of it. It remains in the chest.
|
| On the other hand, when you open a freezer that has a
| door on the front, a substantial portion of the cold air
| spills out of it.
|
| When freezers are coupled with refrigerators, the way
| that many of them work is by having the freezer air
| descend into the refrigerator through baffles (which
| again, makes the freezer work to cool the air that was
| exchanged with the refrigerator).
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Most of the cold is in the solids and liquids though.
|
| That wonderful feeling of the cool gas leaking out leads
| people to overestimate how much cold falls out.
|
| Some more modern fridges/freezers halt the
| compressor/blower when the door is open which probably
| accomplishes more savings.
| rr808 wrote:
| My house moved to smart meters over a year ago. Still get the
| one total usage amount per month. Even if I log in online there
| is no way to see what I use even per day.
|
| I do think we need to have a price that changes during the day
| but I suspect most people wont tolerate it and the politicians
| wont allow it.
| Symbiote wrote:
| In Denmark, I can see my hour-by-hour usage if I log in
| online.
|
| There's also a chart showing the prices:
| https://andelenergi.dk/el/timepris/
|
| and apps and so on.
| rr808 wrote:
| Yeah my Dad has this too. I expected similar. Lots of rules
| in the USA makes it difficult to do anything different.
| happosai wrote:
| In Finland people have started since 2022 adapting their
| electricity use to shift their peak demand. But we started
| installing smart meters almost 20 years ago. I think the key
| reason to install them was less about consumer demand response,
| and more about saving physical visits to read the meters.
|
| It takes some time to adapt (and also some quite extreme price
| fluctuation to motivate). Also good tools to automate demand
| response based on market prices were needed. Heat-pumps and EV
| chargers can now be configured to run on the cheapest hours
| etc.
| Maxion wrote:
| One quite unique thing in Finland is our spot electricty
| price. I think Sweden and Norway also has this?
|
| Basically consumers in these countries have access to the raw
| eletricity market, and can buy power in one hour increments
| at the market rate.
|
| This can be very beneficial for the consumer if you can
| adjust your consumption profile
| robin_reala wrote:
| Yep, I have this with Tibber[1] in Sweden. We haven't
| hugely changed how we consume electricity for small stuff,
| but for bigger things like car charging or even things like
| pyrolytic cleaning of the oven it's easy to pick times when
| the prices are low, especially at the moment when
| electricity often goes down to near-zero or even negative.
|
| [1] https://tibber.com/en
| kkarakk wrote:
| >Still can't find a "smart fridge" that runs in ultra-chill
| mode when rates are cheap and backs off when they're high.
| Kinda antithetical to use more electricity to save but it's
| true.
|
| you put a backup battery system in between your house and the
| power grid, switch power hungry appliances to battery during
| peak times.
|
| over a long enough period this should achieve what you're
| looking for and is the most likely solution to "force" people
| off the grid at peak times.
|
| it's just that right now where like you said - why bother when
| all you're saving is a couple hundred bucks? spending that
| mental energy on things that will earn you money is better.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| Smart meters achieve lots of goals. The most marketable was
| time-of-use electricity pricing.
|
| My distribution company in Ontario makes it very clear when
| those times are and what the electricity prices are. On-peak is
| approx CAD 0.18 / kwh and off-peak is CAD 0.11 /kWh. That's
| over 50% difference.
|
| The problem in Ontario, QC, MB and BC is that electricity is
| cheap, relative to our standard of living. The incentive to be
| more efficient is weak because the savings are not worth the
| effort.
|
| The other reasons smart meters were installed is to speed up
| the meter reading process and to gather data on when exactly
| people are using electricity.
|
| The electricity distribution system is passive and the grid
| operator has little to no visibility on what is happening at
| various places and times. Smart meters are the foundational
| tech to enable a bunch of other initiatives and planning.
|
| Hydro-Quebec, for example, allow you to see your live power
| draw. My meter (2011 model) can do this but my electricity
| distributor will not share the decryption key.
|
| Those meters may not do much to change electricity consumption
| habits but they are far from a loss. The investment is
| absolutely worth it.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Wdym, electricity distributor? I thought hydro Quebec handles
| 100% of the distribution too. Is this something new?
| eldaisfish wrote:
| Hydro-Quebec is vertically integrated.
|
| I'm in Ontario where the situation is different. We have a
| quasi-deregulated market with local electricity
| distribution companies aka LDCs.
| shagie wrote:
| > Still can't find a "smart fridge" that runs in ultra-chill
| mode when rates are cheap and backs off when they're high.
| Kinda antithetical to use more electricity to save but it's
| true.
|
| https://home.howstuffworks.com/green-living/ice-block-ac.htm
|
| A company called Ice Energy manufactures the Ice Bear, a unit
| designed to work alongside a traditional air conditioner. Like
| the large system used by Credit Suisse, the Ice Bear is
| designed to run indoors and at night, when temperatures and
| energy costs are lower. Ice Bear creates a block of ice at
| night that cools the refrigerant during the day, rather than
| running the refrigerant through a condenser (at peak hours)
| that requires a lot of energy.
|
| Underneath the Jordan Quad Parking Lot at Stanford University,
| 360 miles of piping run through a four-million-gallon tank of
| water. At night, subzero ammonia -- a common refrigerant --
| runs through the pipes, freezing the water into giant blocks of
| ice. The system, which is one of the largest of its kind in the
| United States, sends cold water from the melting ice throughout
| Stanford's campus, cooling buildings from noon to 6 p.m. When
| the facility was first built in the mid-1970s, it skipped the
| ice stage, instead directly cooling water that was piped
| through campus. A $22 million renovation -- completed in 1999
| -- converted it to its present form, which saves the university
| a reported $500,000 a year on energy bills.
| adrianN wrote:
| More than forty years to amortize the renovation. Ouch.
| asah wrote:
| At any interest rate above 2.2%, they NEVER amortize the
| renovation!
| cwalv wrote:
| > A company called Ice Energy manufactures the Ice Bear, a
| unit designed to work alongside a traditional air conditioner
|
| Used to manufacture: they declared ch 7 bankruptcy in 2020
| giantg2 wrote:
| In my mind, the smart grid would be most useful for distributed
| storage. Like if your car charger has a battery pack in it to
| quick charge your car. Or just a battery that could charge on
| off-hours to lessen peak load.
| bee_rider wrote:
| There aren't a ton of smart appliances because there aren't a
| ton of smart grids. We need smart grids with, like, really
| significant demand based pricing before people are going to
| care about smart appliances. And of course there's no reason to
| get smart appliances if you don't have that kind of grid.
|
| Somebody has to go first. In the bright side it really is
| unambiguous whose job it is. Utility providers are often
| government subsidized or at least heavily regulated government-
| provided monopolies. They have the responsibility to act in the
| public good, and provide strong enough incentives to get people
| to come along with them.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| We're close to this. California, which is not the world but
| is a major market, has pretty transparent grids with variable
| pricing. I don't know if they're "first" but they're a big
| enough market to drive change.
|
| Electric Cars use a ton of electricity and have these sorts
| of features for a while now. Apple even built grid pricing
| info into their latest "Home" app for California users.
|
| I think there aren't smart appliances because there is no
| demand for people to change their behavior. No one is going
| to put off cooking dinner for cheaper oven use. We see it
| with cars and smart thermostats because it's largely set-and-
| forget with people.
| bee_rider wrote:
| We should slowly expand what "set and forget" means.
| Dishwashers and clothing washers for example, we could
| modify our behavior a little bit without any major
| inconvenience (load it up, put in the soap, and then let it
| schedule itself, you'll get a notification when it runs).
|
| Ovens and stoves are, I think, an unusually bad case.
| Although, slow cooking should be shiftable, right? Maybe
| we'll have to eat slow cooked ribs instead of hamburgers.
| You know, to save the planet or whatever.
| CoffeeOnWrite wrote:
| Or cooking with gas instead?
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Instant pots, kettles, dishwashers, microwaves and
| toasters all reduce energy consumption to do the same
| thing, but I don't think anyone bought them for those
| reasons.
|
| The most effective method to reduce/shift consumption is
| just to make it the easier way.
|
| Adding cognitive load to shopping decisions and their
| daily lives is predictably ineffective for the general
| public (and almost universally hated).
|
| That majority will be a bit poorer because of it, and
| many will cheer that aspect but it also means the target
| goal has failed.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Don't blame it on the smart meters, blame it on the governments
| that refuse to structure the plans to take advantage of it. I
| figured it would be a no brainer to switch to the time of use
| plan because we have an electric car we charge at night, but
| no, the standard non time of use plan is cheaper for us.
| lupusreal wrote:
| > _Still can't find a "smart fridge" that runs in ultra-chill
| mode when rates are cheap and backs off when they're high.
| Kinda antithetical to use more electricity to save but it's
| true._
|
| Maybe just use a freezer and put it on an old school outlet
| timer? Run it at night and treat it like an ice box during the
| day.
| Marsymars wrote:
| I think it would be too well insulated to function very well
| in a fully automated way; you'd have to manually open the
| door every morning.
| margalabargala wrote:
| > found that people didn't really shift their peak demand use
| much and it's debatable if the amount spent was worth it.
|
| This depends on whether the goal was to reduce the amount of
| peak usage, or increase the amount of revenue that comes from
| peak usage.
|
| Putting smart meters in probably paid for itself via higher
| income.
| pcl wrote:
| _> wall warts are all SMPS now_
|
| TIL about switched-mode power supplies...
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switched-mode_power_supply
| etherael wrote:
| How is this sustainable as the gap between self generated and
| stored energy and the grid price continues to diverge?
|
| If present trends hold it won't be long before a few years worth
| of energy bills even in Europe finance a full off grid
| deployment. There doesn't seem to be much room to cut on the
| energy companies pricing which remains variable and pointlessly
| complicated vs "I bought this off grid system and now I never
| think about energy anymore".
|
| Just people in high density housing, people in a lease, and those
| who can't afford the up front cost will constitute the majority
| of residential grid energy usage and purchasing?
| antonkochubey wrote:
| Other than southern Spain, France, Italy and Greece, you're not
| going to run off-grid anywhere in Europe. Too little sun in the
| winter for heating needs. Unless you're considering small-scale
| wind power installations, but I cannot imagine what costs those
| could incur in installation alone.
| stoneman24 wrote:
| Up in Orkney on vacation, the pretty constant wind all year
| (according to relatives) with a little solar, battery storage
| and heat pumps, I reckon off-grid might be possible. Add in
| starlink for internet and I might just stay here.
|
| Not sure of the cost (need to do the research) but all of the
| above are getting cheaper. A small wind turbine can't be that
| costly, surely.
| infecto wrote:
| Wind turbines in my research are pretty terrible unless run
| at scale (massive). YMMV but when I last looked into it,
| small turbines tended to be 1) noise polluters, 2) not very
| large power generators and 3) poor build quality.
| perlgeek wrote:
| The dilemma with wind turbines is that the small ones tend
| to be inefficient (and still much more expensive than
| solar), and large ones require huge up-front investments.
|
| I'd love to be proven wrong about this though, if anybody
| has links to affordable wind turbines / generators, I'd be
| interested.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| small wind turbines have a terrible reliability and
| maintenance track record. They are not worth the
| investment.
| mcsniff wrote:
| Off-grid does not mean renewable-only.
|
| You can run a generator to charge batteries or provide
| additional capacity when needed.
|
| It would be ideal to have full coverage with "renewables"
| (isn't oil and gas a renewable just on a longer timeline?)
| but don't let perfect be the enemy of good if you want to
| move off-grid.
| etherael wrote:
| I do lack familiarity with the European environment, but
| between geothermal, wind, hydro and natural gas backup, is
| it really feasible as it is in places where solar gives
| 0.01 USD kWh prices?
| saagarjha wrote:
| Is geothermal an option?
| ArchitectAnon wrote:
| When I've looked into this before for a client in Scotland,
| it seems the smallest size that made sense in terms of the
| factors other commenters have mentioned was about PS50,000 to
| install. Also it requires planning permission which is much
| harder to get for a wind turbine than for solar PV which you
| can often install without getting explicit permission under
| 'permitted development' rules.
| travisb wrote:
| That vicious cycle is a problem ever more expensive electrical
| grids will need to contend with over the next couple of
| decades.
|
| The variable per Kwh costs are historically generally pretty
| low relative to the fixed capex and opex (eg. maintenance, idle
| runtime) costs.
|
| Mostly this has been made palatable for residential use by
| hiding these fixed costs in a higher per-Kwh rate. This works
| great as long as consumption is high and growing. If
| consumption trends reverse, then self-generation becomes a real
| possibility for the heavy consumers leaving fewer total Kwh to
| spread the fixed costs over.
|
| Left unimpeded this leaves the poorest with very high energy
| bills when everybody else has shifted to a private, cheaper,
| micro-grid.
| bloopernova wrote:
| Wouldn't it be cool if every wall and ceiling socket could report
| its electrical usage? I wonder if that's possible via powerline
| networks, or if it would work over something like Zigbee?
| belval wrote:
| ZigBee could definitely do it but as someone with a lot of
| smart wall plugs (I have a total of ~40 ZigBee devices in my
| house) that data is just not really useful because it's just a
| drop in the bucket compared to cooling/heating/hot water.
|
| One thing that would be more useful and that I really want to
| get is one of those amp meter for the distribution panel to see
| my power consumption in realtime:
| https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007038134809.html but I
| didn't get around to it yet.
| alias_neo wrote:
| This is what I've done; I use a Z-Wave power meter on my
| electricity meter for whole-home, then some individual ones
| for my desk/3dp/rack, the ~50 ZigBee devices I have are
| mostly bulbs or sensors (I also have another ~40-50 Z-Wave
| devices) and the majority are things that use very little
| power; the usage stats from those things is a rounding error.
|
| For bulbs and sensors, the power usage isn't useful for
| automation either, you can use other data they provide (turn
| off lights when no one is around, do stuff when doors
| open/close).
|
| For whole-home though, it can be useful to see if the power
| is higher than you'd expect; if it's not dinner time and
| we're using 2kW+ for more than a few minutes, send a
| notification in case someone left an electric heater or an
| iron or something on.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I'd appreciate smart plugs with _bidirectional communication_
| , as real-time power use report + ability to switch the plug
| = poor man's way to turn most devices into IoT devices for
| local control. It would help in particular with ones operated
| by IR remotes, which deliver commands but don't get feedback
| on their state; you could observe device's power consumption
| to infer the current mode of operation, providing a
| bidirectional control abstraction in e.g. Home Assistant.
| belval wrote:
| Not sure if I am understanding correctly but getting power
| consumption and being able to turn the switch on and off is
| definitely available in even cheap ZigBee switches:
| https://www.amazon.ca/THIRDREALITY-Real-time-Monitoring-
| Comp... (~12$ each).
| alias_neo wrote:
| You can definitely do this with ZigBee, I have smart light-
| switches that report usage; though I'd argue the lights are the
| least useful thing to have usage reporting for, since I already
| know the power consumption of the bulbs, and since I'm using
| LED everywhere, it's negligible compared to the rest of my
| usage.
|
| The problem with ZigBee is network scale and interference, but
| also you're wasting energy by having electronics in every
| socket, always on, always reporting. You're also then driving
| your server harder and storing more data, costing more.
|
| I've aimed to strike a balance of only making smart the things
| I actually care about power usage for; my server rack, my 3D
| printers, my desk, and then whole-home as a single unit.
|
| I don't need to know how much my washing machine or oven uses,
| if I need to use them, I need to use them; there's little room
| for optimising.
|
| When it comes to optimising which settings I use, if I care
| enough, I can use a temporary ZigBee power meter that plugs in
| like a normal device; record data for days/weeks/months and
| adjust based on the result of that.
| trial3 wrote:
| if only! i know this is not what you're asking for, but
| inexpensive Sonoff outlets flashed with firmware and reporting
| to Home Assistant are how i monitor (and switch on and off!)
| the largest consumers of electricity in my home. it's a good
| two-weekend project
| ellisv wrote:
| I used to work closely to this on whole home energy
| disaggregation. There are products for doing this, but the
| value is very limited.
|
| Excluding EVs, heating and cooling is the largest factor for
| energy consumption followed by other large appliances. Small
| appliances and electronics don't use much electricity or aren't
| on long enough to matter.
|
| If you're interested in some product recommendations, the Sense
| Energy Monitor used to be a popular choice. Basically it is a
| set of clamps that you can attach at your breakers to monitor
| specific circuits. It's good for monitoring large appliances
| with their own dedicated circuit. For individual appliances, a
| Kilowatt Meter works fine. If you want something for continuous
| monitoring long term, I'd look at the Eve Smart Outlet.
| megaman821 wrote:
| I have a Sense Energy Monitor. It works pretty well, but I
| wish they made their own smart outlets to integrate with the
| panel monitoring.
|
| Anyways, some pretty clear trends emerge when tracking your
| energy usage. Climate control (heating, cooling, fans,
| dehumidifier) dominates my energy usage, then EV charging,
| the kitchen stuff (refrigerator, cooking, dishwasher), then
| electronics (and I have a ridiculous amount of them), clothes
| dryer and lighting. I would like more insights into my
| electronics for personal curiosity (which Sense can't seem to
| do), but in the scheme of things it probably doesn't matter.
| No individual electronic device is going to make much of a
| difference.
| ericd wrote:
| Not quite every socket, but iotawatt can monitor each circuit
| at the breaker panel, and from there, it's generally not too
| hard to figure out what's going on, and it's really nice to be
| able to get a concrete sense of where your electricity is going
| (for most people with a heat pump, it's mostly the heat pump,
| it swamps even our EV). It's local-only, no cloudiness, and
| it's been rock-solid for us.
| dap wrote:
| This sounds pretty cool. I just went through the docs but I
| can't tell physically how you install the CTs. Our mains come
| into the house underground and into the electrical panel and
| of course the wiring is all in the walls. Are you supposed to
| open up the walls and attach the CTs to the wiring in the
| walls? How would this even work for Romex that runs along
| framing?
| quickthrowman wrote:
| The CTs go inside your panelboard around each hot
| conductor. The CT leads go back to a separate meter
| enclosure.
|
| Here's a commercial grade submeter cutsheet with a diagram
| to illustrate:
| https://leviton.com/content/dam/leviton/lighting-
| controls/co...
| ericd wrote:
| You just turn off your main breaker, open up the panel, and
| snap the CTs/current transformers around one of the wires
| on each circuit (you can open them back up if you mess up).
| You only want to put one wire through, rather than a full
| romex bundle, because it measures the flux through the
| loop, and the return path would cancel out the reading.
|
| It does take a bit of reading to figure out eg what to do
| with 240v circuits (you can usually double it if you don't
| care about absolute precision, usually one leg has the
| control electronics on it and is a bit higher). Also, it
| doesn't have quite as many channels as most panels' max #
| of circuits, so you might have to choose, or try to run
| multiple wires through one CT.
|
| If you're uncomfortable with going into the panel
| (reasonable), you can probably find an electrician that's
| willing to put it in/make it pretty.
|
| I think I saw some YouTube videos of people installing them
| diy before I tried, that might help get you more
| comfortable with the process.
| swatcoder wrote:
| Exhaustive data has nerd appeal, but in practice, you'd add
| power, circuitry, and RF noise overhead to mostly see signals
| that maintain very stable patterns for as long as the same
| thing is plugged into it and used in mostly the same way (i.e.
| for months or years).
|
| All you really need is snapshot understanding of what a device
| really consumes, and only then if it's non-negligible _and_
| some alternative might make sense.
|
| For outlets and receptacles, you can achieve that by just
| inserting a meter where you want. Per-circuit metering in the
| distribution/circuit breaker panel would be nice though.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| You can get KNX switch actuators with per-channel True RMS /
| active power metering. They're like 40 bucks per channel.
| dsalzman wrote:
| There is a company that does this but senses direct from your
| circuit breaker panel. The uses FFT plus algos to determine
| individual devices on each circuit from their unique electrical
| signature. Called Sense I believe. I've never used it.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| On a geek level it would be cool. On a practical level? My
| electric bill is $100 in January and $400 in July. I know
| what's going on.
| skywal_l wrote:
| So you have to go to a third-party to get your data from a public
| service. Absurdity is the word that defined our era it seems.
|
| > "Depuis le passage a l'OAuth2.0, il vous faut obligatoirement
| avoir une entite juridique afin de signer un contrat avec Enedis.
| Pour avoir une entite juridique, il faut obligatoirement etre une
| societe ou une association."
|
| > "Since the transition to OAuth2.0, you must have a legal entity
| in order to sign a contract with Enedis. To have a legal entity,
| you must be a company or association"
| jeffbee wrote:
| Not sure I really agree with all these design choices. The color
| scale on the hour/day grid initially seemed backwards to me. The
| daily total takes up so much space that it would be better as a
| normal line or point graph with scaled axes, instead of trying to
| guess the correspondence with the color.
|
| Aside from that I am curious about the discontinuity at 22h. How
| many and what kinds of loads automatically respond to these price
| signals? Just heaters and water heaters?
| schiffern wrote:
| While trying to skim the data, I kept wishing for a 3D or
| pseudo-3D "skyscraper" visualization, where height represents
| consumption.
| vzaliva wrote:
| I have a very nice Graphana-based UI showing electric consumption
| data from Tesla power wall:
|
| https://github.com/jasonacox/Powerwall-Dashboard
|
| Together with temperatures in the rooms and AC activity:
|
| https://github.com/cdzombak/ecobee_influx_connector
|
| I plan to add a vehicle charging date to it (via Chargepoint
| Home).
|
| I think Graphhana+Influx is a way to go for this type of
| projects.
| nirav72 wrote:
| Does ChargePoint have an accessible API?
| grecy wrote:
| I would love a way to turn off my electric hot water heater
| between the hours of about 10pm and 7am.
|
| I see no reason to keep the water hot during the time absolutely
| nobody needs it, and we know it will take less energy to heat it
| back up again rather than keep it at temperature.
|
| Also, yes, I have turned the temperature down as low as it will
| go.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Are you sure this is true? The thermal mass of water is a lot,
| and in theory your tank should be well insulated?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| It's always true, for any tank on any environment.
| ellisv wrote:
| There are timer devices for this.
|
| Generally you want your water heater to keep the water hot
| enough to kill any bacteria and prevent their growth.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Water heaters in Britain since around the 1980s would have a
| basic timer switch to turn them off/on up to twice a day.
|
| The old (pre-electronics) ones are easy to understand -- the
| heating/water comes on (in this case) at 10:00 and goes off
| at 16:30, then goes on again at 21:00 and off at 07:00:
| https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-timer-control-for-hot-
| wate...
| infecto wrote:
| Your spending more energy engineering that instead of just
| buying a tankless water heater if you care that much about it.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Depends... if you like to take your showers at peak times,
| the tankless might cost you more in opex (in addition to the
| capex).
|
| More and more "tank" water heaters are moving to heat pumps
| which should use less electricity overall than a tankless (if
| you can handle the possibility of running out of hot water).
| infecto wrote:
| Which if you go that angle the capex on a heat pump heater
| regardless if hybrid or pure electric is going to negate
| any savings, those are typically 2-3x of a higher quality
| brand traditional water heater.
|
| Which full circle going back to the original discussion of
| turning off the heater. You probably end up close to no/low
| savings. I can see an argument of a smart heater being able
| to slightly adjust load at peak times but I engineering a
| heater to turn off when you are sleeping and then heating
| back up before use is probably going to not have much
| savings. Those heaters are increasingly made to edge out at
| maintaining the heat and take quite a few hours to heat up.
| grecy wrote:
| Can you get tankless electric? I thought they were only gas
| infecto wrote:
| They definitely exist. I never had one and my understand it
| was they are generally not as great as the gas equivalent.
|
| https://www.supplyhouse.com/Tankless-Water-Heaters-1060000
| Symbiote wrote:
| The cheap ones are fairly common in Britain where the
| user isn't choosing (student houses, cheap rentals etc).
| The installation cost is low, but the running cost is
| high.
|
| They are crap. 8kW is typical, and the pressure for a
| reasonable water temperature is low.
|
| I haven't knowingly used a more powerful one. I suspect
| that would negate the cheap installation cost, as it
| would need a three phase circuit.
| bokohut wrote:
| Yes, You can buy an electric tankless but just be extremely
| informed of the large amperage requirement to instantly
| heat your selected gallons per minute flow.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| If you've got a 240v water heater that is on a 40A or smaller
| breaker, this would work:
| https://www.intermatic.com/Catalog/us/Products/Timer-Control...
|
| If it's larger than 40A @ 240V, you could buy a 120v
| astronomical time clock switch and use the output of that as
| the input to a 120v control coil for a contactor sized for your
| water heater.
| bokohut wrote:
| Per @quickthrowman recommendation I can add that this is the
| way to go for an electric hot water heater having installed
| many of these Intermatic time clocks. The old ones were
| analog and one can hear a clicking but they do make them
| digital now, YMMV.
| rssoconnor wrote:
| I had my electrician build me such a box, though the result was
| so simple that if you are handy I'm sure you could do it
| yourself.
|
| The contents of the box are
|
| 1. A programable timer light switch:
| https://leviton.com/products/vpt24-1pz
|
| 2. A 120 volt controlled contactor. I'm not entirely sure which
| one it is, but I think it is https://ca.rs-
| online.com/product/eaton-cutler-hammer/c25bnb2...
|
| The box has a 240 volt circuit and a 120 volt circuit into it.
| The 120 volt circuit is connected to the programable timer
| light switch, which is then connected to the control inputs of
| the contactor.
|
| The 240 volt line connects to the contactor and then on the
| other side of the contactor it connects goes out of the box and
| to the water heater.
|
| For me I've programmed my hot water heater to turn off from 4pm
| to 11pm on weekdays, which avoids heating the water during peak
| time of day rates at my location. (I typically shower sometime
| during that period.)
|
| I can open the box and press the switch on the timer if I ever
| want to temporarily override the program.
|
| That all said, I don't have any measurements to tell me if it
| is worth the expense. Although it is quite clear from my hourly
| power usage when the hot water tank switches on at 11 pm.
| grecy wrote:
| Awesome, thanks very much.
|
| I wonder if it would be worth keeping it off until sometime
| in the am the following day - do you need piping hot water
| from 11pm until about 5am?
| rssoconnor wrote:
| On weekdays, my price of electricity from 11pm to 7am is
| about 4 times cheaper than from 7am to 4pm, and about 10
| times cheaper than from 4pm to 9pm.
|
| Also I usually run the dishwasher and laundry sometime
| after 11pm, so it is usually helpful to have hot water
| available overnight.
|
| Edit: I should mention that I have a ventless combo
| washer/dryer, so my clothes come out clean and dry in the
| morning. Unfortunately they are not folded.
| kkfx wrote:
| Few notes:
|
| - fear and polemics about connected meters was not about
| "surveillance" by some giant but more about ability to disconnect
| or throttle a customer from remote and third party monitoring to
| elicit family habits for instance to organize a burglary;
|
| - reading the meter without the need to get inside the home was
| already a solved problem with "telereport", a small local
| dedicated bus with wires going in some public places (like the
| hall of a condo, a small box near the portal of a home etc) who
| allow local reading, this could be used to send data remotely
| WITHOUT adding extra abilities like throttling or disconnecting;
|
| - polemics exists for similar reasons for IVRE norms (BEV
| domestic charging) where the norms demand a kind of "remote
| control" to allow disconnecting the load from the grid when
| needed by the grid, without considering the few but not so few
| with domestic p.v. in self consumption that might get
| disconnected as well because there is no analysis of the grid
| absorption load just a "run this if the grid is strained";
|
| - `Enedis website is nice` is well... debatable...
|
| Beside this small notes NOT intended to diminish the author
| creation, IMVHO monitoring is useful only if you can act, for
| instance with p.v. and controllable appliances it's a good thing,
| and unfortunately there is next to none appliance really designed
| to run on p.v. when available, even 99% of those who claim the
| contrary. The first are domestic water heaters who actually could
| be piloted to shift load with HA/Shelly/* sometimes just abruptly
| cutting the power and giving it back when there is enough p.v.
| but not much more, secondary running dishwashers and washing
| machines left loaded and ready in a "run before 'given date and
| time' preferably on p.v. power" and so on. Technically such
| automation are damn simple and cheap if designed as part of every
| appliance but so far next to no one seems to be doing so, while
| mandatory monitoring and published monitoring solutions are more
| and more pushed. Personally having p.v. I do my best to shift
| loads and it's damn hard, mostly limited to smart switches
| connected to HA, because there is not much more to do. I can
| "hack" my dishwasher or washing machines, are dumb and basic
| enough to be easy just seeing their small controls and replicate
| them with a some GPIO on a raspizero and alike but that's a long
| uncomfy process since every machines have it's own controls and
| you have to redo when you change it. There is no standard.
| juahan wrote:
| In Finland (and I guess at least other Nordics as well) we are
| starting to get neters with so called P1-port, which is open for
| the user to get their data. All I needed was a wire with RJ26 and
| an ESP8622 with some esphome definitions and now I get all kinds
| of data from the meter every 4 seconds. Total consumption,
| consumption, amperage and voltages per phase etc.
| nagisa wrote:
| The port/protocol originates in Netherlands and is getting
| widely implemented across the EU. It is really nice that the
| port provides power (esp. in recent versions) for an ESP, so
| you don't need to worry about bringing power to where your
| meter is (which may be outdoors.)
| euroderf wrote:
| Our EL provider in SE Finland is installing (without charge) a
| new P1 meter next spring. It will be bidirectional, i.e. ready
| for solar-to-grid.
|
| This is far from any metro area, so it might be a countrywide
| rollout.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I thought the old meters were all bidirectional (ie: the
| spinning wheel could go backwards if you back-fed). Dunno
| what older gen "smart"meters would do. But I guess the newer
| meters are capable of paying you some reduced/enhanced rate
| for backfeeding?
|
| > installing (without charge)
|
| Who's paying for it?
| Helmut10001 wrote:
| In Germany we have an infrared one-way connection (SML
| protocol). I hooked a Raspberry Pi Zero WH (consumes only 0.7
| Watt) with Ethernet Hat and USB-Infrared-Reader-Cable to the
| Smart Meter. The PI reads and transmits all readings over MQTT
| to my InfluxDB 2.0, which is running virtualized on Proxmox. At
| the same time, I also read my solar inverter through Modbus TCP
| (via OSS called "Solaranzeige"), to the same Influx DB. Both is
| visualized in Grafana. It is a nice stack that did not produce
| any problems in 7+ years.
|
| All of this helped me to better understand my electricity
| consumption.
| oakesm9 wrote:
| The UK has smart energy meters for a lot of customers. Octopus
| are an energy supplier which is using them to great effect for
| data nerds and people who want to save money.
|
| To get the data out, you can just call their API to get daily
| consuption figures, split into half hourly blocks[0]. They also
| allow you to just download a CVS file directly from the energy
| use section of their website.
|
| The data in the API is only update daily, but they can give you a
| tiny addon device[1] for free which will allow you to access live
| usage in realtime (updates ever 10 seconds I think).
|
| I use a Home Assistant integration to collect all this data live
| there.
|
| To make use of the smart meter, they also have a series of
| tarrifs which change price dynamically. The simplist is
| Tracker[2] which charges you a different price per unit every day
| based on the wholesale price. There's also Agile[3] which is the
| same concept but the price changes every 30 minutes with higher
| highs and lower lows. That one is great if you can shift your
| energy usage outside of peak times.
|
| They also have "intelligent" tarrifs where you allow them to
| control your car charger[4] or home battery[5] so it charges when
| it's cheapest.
|
| Octopus are doing really great things in the UK and part of their
| business is that they sell the backend as a service to other
| energy companies who were previously stuck in the stone age as
| Kraken[6].
|
| [0] https://developer.octopus.energy/docs/api/
|
| [1] https://octopus.energy/blog/octopus-home-mini/
|
| [2] https://octopus.energy/smart/tracker/
|
| [3] https://octopus.energy/smart/agile/
|
| [4] https://octopus.energy/smart/intelligent-octopus-go/
|
| [5] https://octopus.energy/smart/intelligent-octopus-flux/
|
| [6] https://kraken.tech
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| The founder of Octopus was from a software background and has
| claimed that Octopus (the energy company) was initially just to
| demo the potential of the software.
| ryankrage77 wrote:
| Ironic that their software is so terrible then - it took over
| two years for their support to do 'something' to my account
| so I could actually pay my bills.
| bokohut wrote:
| As a former electrician turned software engineer and serial
| entrepreneur I have always been conscious of my utilities
| consumption. Per Lorde Kelvin one can only improve what one
| measures and there are many things most people in society
| complain about yet those individuals could improve if they just
| measured; the data doesn't lie, people do.
|
| Around about 2006, after being in my newly built home for a few
| years, I began to ask the questions that many more are just
| starting to ask now about their utilities. Having had an
| extensive background in residential and commercial electrical
| work I knew the options then were limited to measure home
| consumption digitally but I stumbled upon TED, The Energy
| Detective. In 2007 I installed TED in my panels and it has been
| running ever since. I initially only used it as a curiosity item,
| much akin to many Tesla Solar+PW users today in checking the app
| for production and consumption data, never before available in
| such a simple near real-time form of access. TED did however earn
| it keep in helping me deduce electrical draw issues when systems
| within the house were changed alongside just other general
| consumption curiosity.
|
| In 2016 I got serious and started logging all of my utilities at
| the first of every month directly from my meters and I also cross
| collected utility bill data into a spreadsheet. That spreadsheet
| is now large but the information is invaluable in providing me an
| aggregate collection specifics to me and my family only over that
| time. Another side story in itself are the errors I have
| discovered and reported, some of those errors have benefited me
| greatly, once again you can only know such things through
| measuring and monitoring. All of this effort was my LONG GAME
| preparation for going _near_ fossil fuel free and energy
| independent at my home when I found the correct solution for my
| needs.
|
| In 2018 we went fully electric with our personal road vehicles. I
| installed the largest wall charger at the time which supported
| 220V up to 70A. This of course spiked our home usage at times
| however free supercharging was a great bonus and still is. Yes,
| we were early adopters of a fully electric vehicle family now for
| over 6 years and have driven hundreds of thousands of miles
| combined across the U.S. and Canada. I am still amazed at how
| ignorant people are about charging infrastructure since the
| fossil fuel industry has brainwashed people's expectations with
| gas stations on every corner. I have referred many an EV owner
| and while the program no longer exists I still refer people to
| electric, just referred a CT a few weeks back.
|
| As time passed so too did my roof age and those here aware of
| asphalt shingle degradation know builder selections rarely last.
| In 2020 I started down the solar roof planning journey which had
| me upgrading all aging appliances to EnergyStar and in August of
| 2021 the solar roof was installed with two PWs. This led me to
| refactor my spreadsheet to now include my personal generation and
| consumption which the new system was providing me. Here I mention
| the TED again because this _old_ still functioning device had
| provided me with years of historical data and now I would use it
| to compare the numbers from the new system. Yes, I found
| discrepancies that no one had found before and those issues had
| to be resolved within the new system; a new more accurate CT
| device was required as well as firmware changes. You may be able
| to hear me still smiling from this _near_ energy independent
| choice.
|
| My choices have guided my curiosity which has guided my choices
| and this is still so extremely relevant today in that I have a
| unique energy loss problem of which I intend to solve through my
| own energy storage device I am building. Everything provable in
| life boils down to either science or math so if the science and
| math check out then it is only the implementation that matters to
| reach one's goal. I am applying my software, hardware,
| electronics, and electrical experience as a unique subject matter
| expert to build something that solves my problem through the dog-
| food method. Once I have hashed out all the basic issues with
| this simple "complex system" I am building I will then apply my
| entrepreneurial talents once again, that whole 'serial' thing.
| You likely know what happens next given the world's growing
| awareness of a pursuit that I have long had devoted interest in
| represented by the choices I have made solely from monitoring and
| measuring. Thanks Kelvin!
|
| Stay Healthy!
| seanlunabit wrote:
| Howdy HN,
|
| My cofounder and I recently went full-time on GridLite, an app
| and website designed for NYC residents to help manage and split
| utility bills with roommates. We've just added a new feature that
| gives ConEdison users real-time access to their electricity usage
| with 15-minute interval data through our app. Perfect for anyone
| who wants to keep a close eye on their energy consumption. We'd
| love to hear your feedback from this community!
|
| https://gridlite.co/
| lexicality wrote:
| If you live in the UK, you can sign up to https://glowmarkt.com/
| and they'll give you the same 30 minute time slices, or you can
| buy one of their in-home devices for PS70
| (https://shop.glowmarkt.com/products/display-and-cad-combined...)
| and it'll push your usage every 10 seconds to MQTT to give you
| very interesting if completely useless graphs in Home Assistant.
|
| (Not sponsored, I just use it)
| mk_stjames wrote:
| I did a project with a french Linky a few years ago that used an
| ESP8266 to grab the serial data stream from that exposed port on
| the bottom and log the interesting line items it prints out to a
| InfluxDB timeseries database running on a local server and use
| Grafana to get a dashboard of various metrics.
|
| I remember having to do some sleuthing with the serial port as it
| wasn't something standard - it was like 7 bits, no parity, 1 stop
| bit, or something like that. And a small circuit to do level
| shifting for the ESP8266.
|
| The result was data on wattage draw approx every 1 second. This
| allowed for some very, very fine analysis in the data.
|
| I tell people about this when I talk about various sidechannel
| attacks on things that use data like this- for instance, after
| observing the data for a while, I could tell which floor of the
| house someone was on by watching transients of the wattage and
| the quantized changes of various devices turned on and off - e.g.
| the kitchen has a kettle that uses 1220 +/- 5 watts, every time,
| and nothing else in the house results in a step change of that
| value. The top floor bedroom has lights that use exactly 42
| watts. The laundry machine starts up with a very specific ramp
| and then oscillates between two levels of power with a period of
| 30 seconds, etc.
|
| You can figure a lot out about the movements of people and what
| they are doing by simply having fine enough time resolution on a
| single number - the total power consumption of the entire house.
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