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Consumer e-meters and saving electricy

Jon Smirl
Prodigy 200 points

I've been working with some home owners using e-meters and they aren't finding the power consumption information very useful since they only get an aggregate number for the house.  One idea is to build home electrical panels with the power monitoring circuitry built in.  For example a 200A panel would have 40 CTs pre-installed along with the electronics needed for monitoring them. There would be an external jack on the panel to plug in the networking adapter (ZigBee, powerline, etc). When the panel is installed the circuits would be threaded through the CTs.  This makes it easy to monitor all of the circuits.

Does something like this exist? If not it would make a great demo vehicle for these new e-meter chips. Maybe a panel manufacturing company would start making them. I'd buy them if they were available.

Costs for the pre-install monitoring would drop rapidly with volume production of the panels. Especially if California changed code to require them.

  • 0
    Prodigy 200 points

    Another way to do this would be to put shunt resistors and electronics into standard circuit breakers. They would measure the power and transmit the measurement via RF. A small receiver, also inside the panel,  would aggregate the signals from up to 40 circuits in a 200A panel and then retransmit over ZigBee/powerline. This would allow existing panels to be reused. But it would probably be cheaper to swap out the panel and keep the old circuit breakers.

    The goal is to make installing a comprehensive monitoring system easier and cheaper. You can buy monitoring systems right now but they are expensive to install and don't provide much detail.

    When a home owner gets a $700 electric bill you need to be able to say why it was that much. A typical home owner will react by turning off lights when the real problem may be a pool pump that has a timer that is misset and it is running in the peak period when no one is at home. With detailed monitoring data you can figure out where the problem is.

  • 0
    Prodigy 20 points

    Jon Smirl said:
    Does something like this exist? If not it would make a great demo vehicle for these new e-meter chips. Maybe a panel manufacturing company would start making them. I'd buy them if they were available.

    My company created a product that does exactly what you suggest -- high resolution per-circuit monitoring.  Check it out:  http://www.smart-works.com/smart-pdu/

  • 0 in reply to Brian13002
    Prodigy 200 points

    That's pretty close to what I was thinking of.  But it's $3,000 for a 40 circuit setup (plus the panel) which is way too much for consumer use.  Where are these panels used, data centers?

    How do you integrate this capability into a standard home panel that could be sold for $500? Dumb panels are about $200. Can you build the electronics and 40 20A CTs for $150? Cost of the CTs might drive the equation towards shunt resistors. Consumer level volumes could easily yield 1M unit CT orders which would drive the price way down.

    Designing  a home use panel would have a good chance at getting matching DOE R&D funding from the smart energy stimulus grants. Might even get a grant for doing a commercial version.

  • 0 in reply to Jon Smirl
    Prodigy 20 points

    Yes, they are mostly used in data centers.  We do have some customers using them in their homes, as well.  To help lessen the costs, customers generally meter the "critical" circuits at first.  If, in the future, they want to meter more circuits, they simply connect more cards and CTs.

    Anyway, thanks for your interest.  I didn't mean for this to turn into an advertising post :)  You had asked if there was a product similar to what you described, and I just happened to come across it.  Feel free to e-mail or call (contact info on the website) if you need more info.  I agree that the consumer market definitely has a lot of potential here, though.

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