Comments on: Google PowerMeter Installation and First Impressions

By: Eric

Eric — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 04:23:36 +0000

Matthew, I think that as long as the CTs have built-in burden resistors, they shouldn’t have inordinate voltages across them – but there are plenty of other dangers in the panel…

By: Matthew Hermanson

Matthew Hermanson — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 03:28:03 +0000

I have had discussions with the makers of the TED 5000 for another project I’m working on. It should be noted that if you have 120/208 single-phase power, the TED 5000 will not be acurate with its readings. Most SFR’s (single family residences) will be 120/240 single phase and the TED 5000 will work just fine. Many condo and apartment buildings are fed with 120/208 three-phase power and then they serve 1/3 of the units to each pair of the three phases. Works just fine from the electrons persective. But the TED 5000 won’t work correctly. The TED makers are working on such a unit at this time.

Many authories will not let you personally install these devises. And if you are not trained, you shouldn’t do this yoiurself anyway. The CT’s (little doughnut looking things) that are installed to measure the current flow immediately have dangerous voltages on their leads as soon as they are installed. Please be careful and get qualified, licensed help. Saving energy doesn’t do you and/or your family any good after you assume room temperture.

By: Eric

Eric — Sun, 16 May 2010 22:15:35 +0000

Just FYI, Xcel teamed up with OPOWER and it seems that you can sign up for some interesting monitoring at http://xcelenergy.opower.com (this isn’t widely advertised, it was on the flier for one of the so-far-just-randomly-selected customers).

http://sandeen.net/wordpress/?p=305 has a sample graph. I hope they roll this out on a larger scale.

By: Dan

Dan — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 21:50:41 +0000

I am in Minneapolis. I looked at the company that makes the meter I have (Cellnet I believe), found someone who made a reader for it, and emailed them directly. They replied:

“If he has a Cellnet meter (AMR), then they have limited options in being able to read their own meter. What they will need to do is to contact their local utility (I am assuming it is Xcel) and make their request direct. We are working with a company, Tendril to develop a bridge that can read the AMR packets – but Tendril works with the utility (not direct to customer).

“The ecoMeter will only work with ZigBee-enabled metering endpoints, so it will not work for his current endpoint.”

I contacted Xcel and they didn’t seem to have any plans to let me read my own meter. Too bad.

By: Eric

Eric — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 19:00:45 +0000

@Ed, I agree. The sort of nice thing, though, is that it will bring in historical monthly data, so you can see a year’s worth of (monthly) trend right away.

See also http://sandeen.net/wordpress/?p=138 and
http://sandeen.net/wordpress/?p=195 for examples of what it looks like.

It is a shame, though, because many Xcel meters -do- transmit usage data to the utility on a much more fine-grained basis. Oh well, maybe someday …