I ordered a T.E.D.

[RobertSmalls]

Originally Posted by bennelson

The second chart is a cumulative energy use per hour. Since it is set to hourly, and measured in KWH, basically that's that average watts used that hour. Note that the chart maxes out at not much over a KWH.

You mean average Kilowatts used that hour, right?

Does your dishwasher really use that much power? It must be electrically pre-heating the water and using lots of heat in the drying cycle as well.

I bet you're going to try to reduce that 89W fridge off, vacant house figure. Hmm, I wonder how much power my house uses while I'm away.

[bennelson]

Yes, average KW used per hour.

I would like to get that "nobody at home" figure down a bit lower.
Things that come to mind right away that I know use energy include my aquariums (two of them, 40 gal, and 210 gal, both cold-water) my computer wireless router, and my wife's kitchen laptop computer.

Besides that, I am sure there are a few other phantom loads to track down.

[Daox]

Very cool Ben! I really want one now.

Would your recommend the 5000C to get the display unit, or do you find that using the computer software is much more useful?

[bennelson]

I was just on the computer at the same time my wife flushed the toilet.

I quickly switched over to the TED software to see in real-time how much power the greywater pump used.

With the real-time chart, I could see both power and time. The pump pulls almost exactly 1000 watts, and runs for about 30 seconds!


I haven't really used the physical display unit that much yet. The MAIN feature of the TED system IS the computer software display. It tracks all the info, displays it, charts it, etc. etc.

The physical display is more similar to a thermostat for a furnace or a thermometer. It's something you would put somewhere and can just look at. It doesn't require booting up a computer, or taking up a lot of space.

At my house, I have a laptop that's always on, so taking a look at the TED isn't a big deal on the computer.

However, the physical display could go on your coffee table or in your kitchen - someplace it's easy to see and recognize how much power you are using. It's small an unobtrusive, but can be that constant reminder to turn the ights off.

Since the physical display is an optional item (basically $40), if you want to buy it or not depends on how you will use the TED. It will vary from household to household.

I think that at my place, I will work with the software a lot at first. Later on, I will just keep the physical display on the coffee table or kitchen counter as a constant reminder of energy usage.

[RobertSmalls]

I'd be tempted by the one that can log multiple channels.

It looks like it reads through an inductive ammeter: Additional 5000 series CT Set

Ben, did you need to cut any wires to do the installation? Is there room to add more channels?

[bennelson]

Installation is fairly straight-forward, and no wire are cut.

The "readers" are clamp-on ammeter devices that look like a tiny pair of hand-cuffs. You simply clamp the two of them around the two main power leads into the house.

To power the transmitter, you need to tie in three wires, (one red, one black, and one white) to live power. You do that by connecting the red and the black into two different breakers - one to each leg of the power, and then the white into the common, neutral buss.

A note on the instructions say not to put said red and black wires into the same breakers as anything else is on, unless your local electrical code specifically allows it, etc. - Since I already happened to have a spare two-circuit, 30 amp breaker kicking around anyways, I just added that, and put the wires there.

The system does allow for adding another power reader/transmitter so that if you have a wind or PV system, you can track that energy seperately.

[bennelson]

Interesting....

Today is overcast, but still bright. No need to use electric lights. And it's cool outside. No reason to run the furnace or air-conditioning.

Sounds like a good time to start switching off circuit breakers for find phantom loads.

Pretty much everything in the house was off, yet I was still using over 50 watts.

I unplugged 3 timers, used for a light and my aquariums.
With everything off in the house, it was very quiet. I could now hear a faint buzz from my furnace. So, I flipped off the furnace circuit-breaker, and my wattage dropped by 6!
Who knew a furnace has a phantom load of 6 watts?!

My dishwasher has a 1 watt phantom load.

My sump-pump circuit has a 2-watt phantom load. There is a power strip down there with a couple things plugged into it. I will have to crawl down there and see which it is.

One thing that I forgot about is the the smoke detectors in my house are HARDWIRED for electricity, with battery back-up!
That circuit (which also includes my wife's alarm clock) take 6 watts.

In the end, I was able to get my power down to 5 watts.
Of course, the TED receiver uses power. I plugged that into a Kill-a-watt, which read 2 watts. The receiver itself is marked as 1.5 watts, but the Kill-a-watt only does whole numbers.

That leaves 3 watts left over.
If the receiver uses 2 watts, I don't think it is a stretch for the transmitter to use 3.

Keep in mind that this is all done over a computer wireless network. My computer is a laptop, which can run on batteries. My wireless router and internet access can not. I ran a 100-foot extension cord to the detached garage, where I ran the those items off the 48V battery backup UPS I have there.

So, that's it. All energy use finally accounted for.

Now that I know where it's all going, I can start to take steps to see where else it might be possible to trim down a few more watts.

[gone-ot]

...I noticed they mentioned power-factor (PF) once, but never mention anything more about it again. Do they say more in the manual?

...without that, all the data is NOT truly accurate...representative, yes, but not accurate. Without knowing the PF, it's like all the data is 'scaled' but you don't know whether it's scaled UP or scaled DOWN.

...typically the PF is always less than 1.0 (or 100%), but can vary quite a bit if you're a long ways away from the major down-converting transformer(s)...and, whether or not your power company has installed "phase-compensating" capacitors across their distribution lines.

[Clev]

That's the problem with a lot of the homebrew ones I've found on the Internet as well. Is there a way to make a clamp-on transformer-based meter reasonably accurate?

[bennelson]

The only reference I have found to power factor is that you can display it in the live dashboard on the center "speedometer" gauge.



In the image, you can see the PF listed in the lower right corner.
I also have it showing kVA in the upper right.

kVA times PF = watts, right?
If I multiply the number in the upper right by the lower right, I get the number in the upper left.

I still don't quite get power factor. There was a nice little side bar on it in the latest HOME POWER, but I'm still not sure I get it.

PS: I also notice that the PF number changes depending on what electric devices are running in my house.

And which do I pay for on my electric bill? kVA-hours or watt-hours?