Electricity Meter
 

I just installed the Emporia Vue WiFi home electricity monitor. It was $100 on Amazon and came with a main power meter along with 8 branch circuit monitors.

Installation was a breeze and I didn't get shocked while working on live circuits, for a change. The app was simple to use and is working very good.

https://ecomodder.com/forum/attachme...p;d=1581404522

The individual sensors won't register anything below about 35 watts, but once above that it seems to be fairly sensitive and precise. Small loads below 35 watt can be seen in the main consumption sensor as long as the total is above 35 watts.

There was 1 circuit that appeared to draw nothing, so I shut it off. Then I decided to turn it on, and I heard a hum coming from the panel, and perhaps elsewhere. The app showed the 120v 15a circuit spike to 7,000 watts (accidentally had multiplier set to 2 in the screenshot). About 4 seconds later, it flat-lines and never registers again. If I flip the power off for a couple seconds and back on, nothing. If I let it rest a minute, I'll get another spike when I flip it on. What could this device be? Do sprinkler valves use transformers, and could that be what the brief heavy load is? It's labeled spare on the panel. I hate how haphazardly electricians document their work with illegible Sharpie scribbles.

https://ecomodder.com/forum/attachme...p;d=1581404537

In total, there are 4 circuits I don't know what they do, so I shut them off.

There are 3 switches inside the house I haven't found a function to yet. I discovered a switch in the coat closet that controls a single outlet under the eve of the roof outside. Finding that was a miracle. I need 3 more of those.

looks like a short circuit waiting to happen but those wires will vaporize before then
:eek:

i'm pretty sure this is not legal on the NEC standard mixing low voltage and high voltage together like this imo

do you know if it is CAT III certified rated?

I might have to disconnect those unknown circuits and attach a tone generator to them, then crawl around in the attic to trace them out.

I don't think the circuit that buzzes when I turn it on goes to a sprinkler valve transformer, because as far as I know, the only think that switches them is the sprinkler controller in the garage, and that's unplugged.

It's no voltage on the inductor loops because they are passive. The only low volt is the small transformer in the panel. It's probably to code since the company sells on Amazon and is well rated. I don't really care anyhow, because it's safe.

Door bell transformer?

I'm finding a 40w phantom in the bathroom lights/bedroom lights & plugs circuit. The controller for the fan might be 1w, the Google mini is about 1w, and the various LED switches and digital timers might be another 1w. I've got quite a lot of unaccounted watts to track down.

So far my overall lowest registered consumption is 450 watts. I'll have to start tracking down where all this idle consumption is coming from. I know some of it is office equipment I need to turn off at night, but that couldn't be more than about 100 watts.

This house is driving me crazy with unknown breakers and switches, along with unaccounted for phantoms.

If I can kill 100w of idle/phantom drain, this meter will have paid for itself in the first year.

Good idea. I checked the doorbell and it still rings despite the suspect breaker being off. Not the doorbell transformer.

Heck, with that much power surging when flipped on, I should be able to locate it in the attic using a clamp on ammeter while my wife flips it on/off.

You can run 2 or 3 or how ever many wires that will fit that are in phase with each other and get combined amp reading.

My AC compressor has a oil heater in it, not sure if they all do that would be on 220v. Do window units or mini-splits?

Might have to look into one of these, I think my elect bill is higher than it should be and I did most of the wiring.

If I get an EV, I'll either need to free up some more space in the panel with slim breakers, or steal the unused dryer or range circuits.

Splits have oil heaters too.

If your panel is full and you put in double breakers in to asd more circuits and if your panel isn't listed for that many circuits it will be considered over loaded.
I always buy oversized panels listed for twice as many circuits as there are spaces, so if I ever do fill a panel and add a double breaker I won't be over loaded.

I've never built a house, so I've never put in a panel. This one seems about as big as they come, and it's full.

I'll look at the relevant code because I try to adhere to it when it's not too costly.

Well I dropped my idle consumption average over night from about 560w down to 510w, mostly from discovering that my work PC was set to never sleep or turn off the display (3 of them).

• My office dropped from 105 watts to 45
  
• The furnace accounts for about 150 watts idle consumption where it keeps temps above 65 degrees.
• The refrigerator accounts for about 75 watts of idle consumption.
• Bedroom is still idling at 40 watts- I need to find out why.
• Modem, router, server consumption is around 30 watts; just below the threshold for a branch circuit to detect

That all adds up to 330 watts, so I've got nearly 200 watts unaccounted for at this point. Time to switch off breakers and see what happens. This process of hunting down phantoms involves starting out with the big picture and slowly zeroing in on branch circuit consumption, and then individual energy consumers.

This is definitely cheaper than generating power.

Nice! Time to start adding 2nd life solar panels and inverters to your house. :P

I've got a guy stopping by to evaluate my home for solar today.

Maybe I should purchase the minimum amount of solar that maximizes the various local incentives, then add my own to it later when I have time. Then again, my rough estimate is that the minimum to capture all the incentives is roughly what I'd need to offset my use.

That's an 8 kW system for me.

6 kW would max the incentives for my parents.

You're a spread sheet guy. I'd recommend doing your own solar calculations. I've done a lot of calculations, but I noticed the ROI was not good. Even with a lot of DIY/refurb/2nd life stuff it takes a lot of labor with little return. Let me know what information he gives you.
p.s. batteryhookup apparently is going to start adding the 2nd life hospital solar inverter/panels soon. Per the owner on facebook.

This meter looks interesting.

https://youtu.be/s45bd3nFmDg

It looks interesting, but it's got a lower Amazon rating and costs 3x as much. I might get it sometime and see which I like better, and give my parents the other one.

It will be interesting to see your daytime/nightime power use. You could basically focus in on how big of a battery you would need.

I'm down to about 120w continuous draw unaccounted for at the moment. 40 of those are somewhere on the master bed/bath circuit, and I'm at a complete loss there. When I kill the circuit, everything else in the house functions as far as I can tell.

I'll have to turn breakers off one by one and see how many watts each one is responsible for to isolate those last 120w. Don't know how I'll go about isolating the 40w from the master bed/bath.

I started labeling outlets and switches to relate it back to the breaker number. That's how much this drives me crazy.

Sounds like you might have a component leaking voltage to ground. Ground fault. A lot of the time it's not enough to trigger gfci if it is even there.
You can always try moving brakers, switches, plugs around and see if the problem follows to the new slot you move it to.

I think besides the toilet, wiring is usually the oldest thing present in the house.

If there is GFCI in the master bathroom, then there could be a circuit located in yet another room that it is connected to. The house I live in has a GFCI in the master bedroom on the south side of the house. It is connected on the same circuit as the garage which is located on the north side of the house. JJ

I'll turn the circuit off one of these days and scour the house for lights or outlets that no longer work. The garage is nearby the bed/bathroom, but is completely separate from that circuit.

Then there's the 2 circuit breakers I have no idea what they control, or the 3 mystery switches inside the house.

I'm going to start a spreadsheet to document everything, and start labeling the switches and outlets with the circuit number they are connected to.

What if Johnny was the original electrician?

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ucdZHR75iCM/hqdefault.jpg

Those breakers might not go anywhere!

The Jhonny’s of this world do some pretty weird shayt.

I owned appartments opposing each other with my brother at some point. And i needed to do work on my electrical blinds. I shut all brakers of my house only to discover that the blinds were still active. They were wired to my brothers appartment instead of mine :S

How's the update going on this? I just put mine in after forgetting about it and I love it. Kinda the scanguage of housing