Welcome

This is a project to develop and build open source energy monitoring and analysis tools for energy efficiency and distributed renewable microgeneration.

28th of January 2010 – Documentation finished for the whole home energy monitor.

The energy monitor is working away logging energy consumption data, giving some informative readouts and nice looking graphs! there's more about it in the blog post here and the documentation here.

    

Left: The display, Middle: The main unit with CT sensor, Voltage sensing, USB datalogging... Right: Ethernet unit for internet connectivity

 

ProjectDescription.pdf

 

How the documentation works

The documentation is split into three main parts:

1) Build a basic setup

This consists of a:

Sensor -- Arduino -- simple computer output

And at present there are a several sensor types available with the basic setup for each one documented. Once you have the basic setup working it can be extended in several ways:

2) Extend your basic setup

The basic setup of any given sensor can be extended in a number of ways from computer based storage and graphing to internet based storage and graphing, from 7-segment displays to wireless Xbee communication and so your setup could look like this:

Sensor -- Arduino -- Xbee ))) ((( Xbee -- Arduino -- Arduino Ethernet -- Web based graphing

Super modular design

The overall design is very modular making it possible to customize as much as you like, you could go for a simple setup with a single sensor connected to a computer via USB logging to a file or you could go for a massively complex setup with multiple sensors, wireless communication, 7 segment displays, computer based graphing, internet based graphing and whatever else you would like to connect up.

3) Complete setup examples

Build a basic setup

Energy Use

Mains AC: non-invasive 2 - Voltage, Current and powering the arduino

Non-invasive measurement of mains voltage using a power adapter and mains current using a CT sensor. Useful for measuring electrical energy used by the whole house/building. Doesn't require any high voltage work. 

 

Mains AC: non-invasive 1  - Current only

Non-invasive measurement of current only using a clip-on current transformer (CT) sensor. Doesn't require any high voltage work.

 

Mains AC: invasive

Measuring electrical power used by devices connected to a mains AC power strip using the invasive current sensing resistor method. Requires working with high voltage's. Development currently discontinued in favour of the above non-invasive methods.

 

Energy Capture

12V DC: invasive

Measurement of electrical power produced by micro-renewables including the Hugh Piggot wind turbine using the current sensing resistor method.

 

12V DC: non-invasive:

http://openenergymonitor.blogspot.com/2009/09/experiments-with-hall-effect-current.html

http://openenergymonitor.blogspot.com/2009/09/hall-effect-sensor-circuit-diagram.html

 

Extend your basic setup

Local computer based Data Graphing, Analysis and Storage

Using KST for graphing.

 

 

 

Java based software

ArduinoComm

ArduinoComm is used for all the basic sensor setups as the first step on the computer side to read the data coming in from the arduino and output it to terminal for viewing.

 

Power Logger

Graph values the values send by the Arduino in real-time. Zooming and panning with the mouse so that you can quickly access data back in time and see larger or smaller sets of data.

 

VISampler

Based on the same code as power logger but has an extra button called sample sends a request to the Arduino to sample a small part of the voltage and current waveform and then send it in one lump to the VISampler program. This allows you to see the waveform in fair detail with the sampling rate adjustable from 5kHz to 35kHz if sampling voltage and current. Or twice that if sampling only current or voltage. Sample rate is set in the Arduino sketch.

Example code

Some arduino - java examples from reading in integers and doubles sent by the arduino to outputting to a simple frame and using a simple GUI consisting of a couple of buttons to send data to the Arduino.

Display

How to add a Display - details how to add a display that has a 4 7-segment digits a mode changer to make it possible to cycle through the various values to be displayed and a frequency indicator that shows when the grid is under or above 50Hz.

Storage

How to add USB pen data logging

Internet connectivity

Pachube

Google appspot + vis

Arduino Ethernet Shield + perl + mysql + Flot based graphing

Wireless communication

Xbee wireless

Complete setup examples

How to build a whole home energy monitor

that has a display for easy, quick access to current energy use information, usb datalogging for detailed long term data storage and internet connectivity for online graphing.

 

Extra

Mains AC Power measurement theory

12V Arduino controlled load controller

Open Source

This project is an open source project. Following the principles of the Free Software Movement the software source code and hardware designs are available at no cost to everyone under the GNU General Public Licence.

The project being open source gives the following potential:

It makes it possible to do more than just use the technology, you can learn how it works from the physics of AC and DC electricity to electronic circuit design and software programming. You can build it yourself and modify it to your needs. You can take part and benefit from a collaborative effort to develop and improve it. If it breaks you can learn how to repair it and when it comes to the end of its useful life it is easier to take apart so that different components and materials can be recycled in to new technologies. 

Contribute

Please don't hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions or suggestions or if youd like to become a developer.

Forums

If you have any comments and questions, if you could use the forum that would be great. I think it will be easier to use and see what's going on than the comment threads.

Comments