I ordered a T.E.D.

[Weather Spotter]

Yes it is a scaled measurement but it will always be scaled higher than the rated watts unless you have a capacitor in the circuit to cancel out the PF. If you add to many capacitors you will go past 1 (no lagging sine wave) and start going back to using more Amps, just with a leading sine wave. Only coils of wire generate PF issues (think transformers and motors). From some of my classes, a typical house's PF is .80 to .95. So for your use just ignore PF.

[Weather Spotter]

You are billed on Kwh or 1000 watts used over an hour. Watts have no time component to them so a 60 watt light bulb will draw 60 watts for how ever long it is on.

To pay for it:
multiply 60 (or the number of watts your device uses) by the number of hours on (say 10) = 600 watt hours
divide by 1000 = .6 Kwh.
multiply that by your $ per Kwh = cost

[RobertSmalls]

You're billed by the Wh, but you burden the grid by the VA. Commercial and industrial customers with bigger hookups pay by the VA.

[bennelson]

My Power Factor is at 92% right now.

Also, it looks like the physical display unit does NOT get its data from my wireless router. I had my router and cable modem OFF and the display was still updating!

Looks like the TED receiver must have a wireless signal sender inside it to drive the display.

Good to know, because it means I can turn off my router (to save power when not used) and still get updated power data.

[Daox]

Is there any way to make your google powermeter chart public? If I got one (more like when ) I'd like to be able to do that.

[bennelson]

Originally Posted by Daox

Is there any way to make .... public?

That was one of the first things I was wondering too.

Google allows for sharing data, by punching in somebody else's e-mail. Nothing for a "public posting".

Power Meter is associated with your Google account. I suppose it would be possible to create a new dummy Google account, and make the username and password public, but there would be no way to keep other people from messing with the settings.

I wonder if it would be possible for somebody who really knows web programming to pull data from an account and then publically post THAT data?

Apparently, Google aggregates data from Google Power Meter in participating utilities, and makes THAT data public. That way you can see how much energy you use compared to the average in your neighborhood/city/state.

[Fhajad]

Originally Posted by bennelson

I wonder if it would be possible for somebody who really knows web programming to pull data from an account and then publically post THAT data?

Someone has probably already showed how to do the work and has it some where.

Google's API's are cool like that.

[doviatt]

I'm installing a TED 5000 this weekend. I didn't even know what one was 'till about a week ago.
I can't wait to see what I can learn from it.
Hypermiling the house? Yeah, I guess that is how you can put it.

[bennelson]

I think you will be real happy with it.

The only thing to watch for is that you have to be a little careful which circuit you put the "receiving unit" on. It's REALLY sensitive to to other electrical items on the same circuit.

The manual says something like to not have it on the same circuit as electric motors or computers. That is nearly IMPOSSIBLE in my house! I had to have it running off an extension cord from the bathroom for a long time, as that was the only circuit anywhere near my network router that it would work on!

This weekend, I had borrowed network cabling tools from a friend, and made a long ethernet cable to go from the outlet right off the circuit breaker box back to my router.

If the TED is getting interference from anything else on the same circuit, it just plain doesn't work - but there really isn't anything to indicate that - It's the only thing I learned about the TED the "hard way", so I just wanted to warn others.

[doviatt]

Thanks for the tips. I'll let you all know how my install goes. I think it will be worth the effort. Should be easier and quicker than it was building and installing my MPGuino.