Mains voltage logger

[murdock]

this could be interesting...with the electricty increase of 35% coming into affect soon...and considering it has become our biggest household expense...i will be looking at converting to a pre paid meter so that the bill doesnt run away like it is at the moment.

My PQA equipment is too expensive to leave recording for long periods of time this could be a cheaper option to leave on site.

i am just too busy at work to look into my electricity consumption and ways to improve and lower useage.

anyone looked into gas options...are they going to be cheaper when the electricity is increased...or i am gona have to build a fire place and fit a donkey for hot water and braai every night

[AndyD]

anyone looked into gas options...are they going to be cheaper when the electricity is increased...or i am gona have to build a fire place and fit a donkey for hot water and braai every night

Well with the increase in electricity price I can see a steady increase in gas demand happening over the next few years. I doubt it will be immediate but as people replace equipment such as heaters and cooking appliances then they will consider gas more and more as an option. Will the increased demand for gas result in it's price increasing? Probably, so the donkey may be the way to go ;-)

Like you say, leaving you PQA equipment on site can be risky, at least with four grands worth of kit the insurance won't be so high and even if it's not insured it's not the end of the world if you loose one each year to theft. I wouldn't say the same for your Fluke PQA though. Also at 2-3 thousand Rands it's hardly worth sending them in for calibration every year, you might as well just buy a new one.

[hardwic]

Hello to the forum.

I Realize this is an old thread but reading it, I thought some maybe interested.

I have been working for a while now to optimize my own power consumption.
In doing so, I used my Fluke 287 and Scopemeter 199 to do most my initial monitoring.

I realized that to correctly save, you have to know what you are using and what the mains condition is like.
The Fluke kit is not ideal to be left dedicated to this task so I built my own.

The system comprises of a 16mhz CPU (Atmega128) with 8 AD converters and real time clock.
Initially the plan was to have 1 voltage input and 7 current sensors.

I then realized that having a real time graph of you main phase is actually all you need so I only equipped 2 CT's and 1 voltage sensor. I was not targeting 3 phase but the concept will apply.

Anyway the point is I know have Real power graphed in this minute, this hour, last 60 hours.
It also show power factor, wH, voltage, current, price and voltage/current waveform.
The output compares very well with the Fluke 199 considering I only have 16mhz and can only do 1 AD conversion every 3 cycles.

I considered adding a SD card for logging but dropped the idea because the graphs where more than necessary. Comments in this thread are making me think this is requirement.
Any suggestions of other features welcome.

The legal aspects of being able to use this data in court was never my intention because even top of the range kit can be discredited in court for many reasons. The intention was to make this information available/affordable so that it could be left in place in the average home permanently.

To give you an example, my house normally idles at 300Wh at around 230V. The last few days the mains voltage has been up at 247V and my idle consumption is sitting at over 500Wh.
So I know suspect I am paying more due to the high mains but my load is the same!

I didn't think there was actually a market out there though as most people don't care/understand. This thread has me thinking otherwise though.