EmonPi Monitoring

[CasualCheetah]

Hi, I was wondering if anyone had some experience with the monitoring goodies they talk about in the link below.

I have read elsewhere/everywhere on the thread about EmonCMS (I have no idea what it is or how it works), but was just wondering how this compares to AICC and it's abilities.

https://openenergymonitor.org/emon/

[___]

I've built one, or more accurately, I duplicated that circuit ten times so I could monitor each circuit in my house separately. I got bored of it over a year ago :-)

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[Guest]

EmonPi is a general solution that runs EmonCMS. When I build AICC I wanted a cloud solution that is reatime and flexibale. EmonCMS does that job. So AICC has a realtime feed to any EmonCMS server. 

[Fnm]

On ‎2016‎/‎03‎/‎22 at 8:40 PM, plonkster said:

I've built one, or more accurately, I duplicated that circuit ten times so I could monitor each circuit in my house separately. I got bored of it over a year ago :-)

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@plonkster, I am looking at the emonTx as to try and understand what my system is doing or how to manage it better.

As in the picture you can see that I have two different solar systems, on the left a 9 x 310W panels and Axpert 5Kva inverter with 8 x 200ah Renesola battery bank.

This system feeds the red phase in the house only, on this phase is all lights and plugs except the plugs in kitchen (only the fridge and freezer) 

The yellow and blue phase is still grid connected. On these 2 phases is washing machines, geysers, stove ens.

On the right hand side is 3 sets of 6 x 250W panels with micro inverters, 1 x set per phase. Want to expand this system with time.

What I try to measure is the Kwh for the workshop per phase and what the micro inverters produce per phase. To do that I need to measure at 6 different places.

I also need to measure what the house consumption is and there I need to measure the yellow and blue phase and the red phase before the inverter.

This is a total of 9 readings.

My question now is, will I be able to do this with the emonTx and will I be able to get some useful information out of the system.

[___]

I'm not that clued up on how three phase is billed or measured, but I would assume what you'd need is a current transformer on every phase, exactly as you described. Then you'd need an arduino with enough inputs, many of them have only 8, I think the mini has 12. I also don't think you'd be able to use the standard software, but you should be able to use the emon library (which is what I did) to write your own.

Also, in my case I didn't bother with voltage measurement, I did only current measurements, so I'm ignoring power factor. For accurate results, you should measure the voltage waveform as well. I think you might get away with measuring 9 different voltages, you might be able to get away with measuring just one. This because you know the voltage waveforms are 3/2*pi out of phase, so you could probably infer the voltage on the other phases by just measuring one. Basically, if you know the peak voltage and the current instantaneous voltage, then you can work out the phase angle, add 3/2*pi to it (in radians), and work out V_peak * cos(theta). That will save some pins and hardware.

So then you will have 9 streams of data... what you do with them, I'm afraid, is up to you :-)

[Deamon]

@plonkster How did you build this. I just got solpiplog up and running with local emoncms. But want to see what I am using from the grid and what I am Using on solar. So it looks that emonpi is the way to go or am I mistaken?

[Jaco Venter]

@Deamon EmonPi should be good enough for what you want to do.

I bought an IotaWatt which can measure 14 current streams and has a voltage reference. The IotaWatt is not set up as yet but will be able to reply soon with results.