Measure Power Consumption

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Hi guys,

I’m searching for a solution to measure the power consumption of the whole house.
Is there any other “easy” possibility besides the Youless LS120?

I understand that the YouLess device does not measure power itself but reads it from the utility meter, is that what you are looking for? If you want to measure it yourself, you could hook up ampere meters, for example for every group in your house.
Reading the utility meter could be done in two ways, depending on your utility meter: counting the pulses or reading the p1 port. If you have a p1 port, you could make a [cable](lhttp://www.esp8266thingies.nl/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/P1wifi_handleiding.pdf yourself buy a p1-to-USB cable and plug it into a raspberry pi.
A pulse counter could be made of a LDR and a counting device (arduino / ESP8266 / Raspberry Pi) or can be bought already made.

@tnederlof19
thanks for your reply

I still have one of the old style utility meters (think it’s called ferraris) with the rotating disc so something like the youless device would be the best for me as I want to get the consumption of the whole house.

The EXP8266 Module you linked already has wifi on it??
How is this configured and how can I get the data into pimatic?
Do I understand correctly that this board has to be mounted to the utility meter to “see” the red dot on the disk?

Yes a ESP8266 is an Adruino with wifi onboard. Most ESP8266’s can be programmed via the micro-usb-connector, make sure you buy one with such a connection. You can use the onboard LDR of the module I linked or buy a d1-mini and solder a separate LDR to one of the inputs.
For the software on the ESP8266, install ESP Easy and configure it as pulse counter via its webbrowser. The ESP8266 will send the measured power to your pimatic device.
Note that most powermeters have a pulsed LED that blinks when 1/1000 of a kwh is consumed. A rotating disc could be a bit more difficult to ‘read’ with a LDR since it might require a small light, like a normal LED, to light the disc, such that the LDR can distinguish the rotating red spot.

@tnederlof19 said in Measure Power Consumption:

Note that most powermeters have a pulsed LED that blinks when 1/1000 of a kwh is consumed. A rotating disc could be a bit more difficult to ‘read’ with a LDR since it might require a small light, like a normal LED, to light the disc, such that the LDR can distinguish the rotating red spot.

Ok great, I will have a look at my powermeter when I get home today!

@theslashy said in Measure Power Consumption:

I still have one of the old style utility meters (think it’s called ferraris) with the rotating disc so something like the youless device would be the best for me as I want to get the consumption of the whole house.

For a ferraris power meter I have found some building guides (sorry all in German).
You can use the Hardware for ESP-Easy, a GPIO-Pin of your Raspi ect.

Stromzaehler
Ferraris Lesekopf

@V1per

german is great
I have found these as well but the problem seems to be that they are for the “volkszähler” project and this plugin does seem to have problems on pimatic 0.9 and wasnt updated in a long time.

I was not aware that there is another way to get the values to pimatic

@theslashy
You are right they are on the “Volkszähler” site but the first link should work also without VZ.
It see’s the red market and give an impulse out, this impulse you can use on a GPIO on the Raspi, an Arduino, an ESP ect. to send it to pimatic whitch can interprete it.
I measure so my gas meter.

@V1per said in Measure Power Consumption:

You are right they are on the “Volkszähler” site but the first link should work also without VZ.
It see’s the red market and give an impulse out, this impulse you can use on a GPIO on the Raspi, an Arduino, an ESP ect. to send it to pimatic whitch can interprete it.
I measure so my gas meter.

Ok, that sounds good. I will see if I have any type of led on my powermeter and then i will decide what to use.

in pimatic do you just put the data in a variable or how do you interprete it?

Here is another (perhaps less accurate ) solution:

https://forum.pimatic.org/topic/869/3-phase-current-meter-with-sct013-sensors

Another disadvantage is you may need an electrician to get the SCT013s mounted to the cables which might be only accessible from the inside of the electrical cabinet

@mwittig

that looks good, too.
The only concern with your solution for me is sending the data outside my network, but I like the idea with the current sensor.
I may have to get one just to play with it, I think mounting the SCT013 on the Cable should be managable by myself.

you don’t need to send your data outside your network. you can program the attiny to provide data in plain text.
the difficulty is to adjust the sensors to the nearest wattage and of course the mounting in the electrical enclosure! do that on your own risk !!

which energy meter do you have? maybe it’s possible to read out your energy meter via IR - if it’s a digital one.

@leader21

I have a really old one from 1984
no led, just the spinning disc.

I think your solution with the induction measuring is a good starting point, I will order three sensors and the board for the raspberry pi

@theslashy said in Measure Power Consumption:

@V1per

german is great

EDIT: Translated text to English, @GooglyEyz Please, don’t use German outside of the “Support in Deutsch” topic. Thanks!

Edition 17 of the German c’t magazine contains an article (see page 90) which describes how to build smart meter using Raspberry Pi and Modbus Energy Meter. However, the meter is for private use only, hence it does cannot replace the existing energy meter. Installation should only be performed by an authorized electrician and local safety regulations apply. The article describes the integration with OpenHAB, however, thanks to the REST API it should be no problem to integrate with pimatic, too.

https://www.heise.de/ct/ausgabe/2017-17-Stromverbrauch-analysieren-mit-Raspi-und-Smart-Meter-3787264.html

Can you post a picture of your energymeter? There is a chance that the disc has a black mark/stripe on it or some spot on the disc. That should be your starting point to capture when this spots passes with something like a extra LED and a LDR.

you can use a tcrt5000 sensor for reading out ferraris energy meters

@koffienl isn’t that a part of ESPimatic? you are reading the pulses from a sensor and send it to pimatic at the given intervals as far as i understood.

so if there would be no interval but a continous reading and sending of pulses it might be possible to read out the energymeter
i know that it’s not fitting the needs, but maybe it could be possible with ESPeasy at the moment.

however, the question of @theslashy is how to see the actual wattage. it might be possible to calculate the wattage with the time period between the pulses but i guess this is very inaccurate.

Yes, it can count the pulses from such a sensor and send to pimatic.
Haven’t played a while with it because they upgraded my meter to a smartmeter.

@koffienl
ok so with a tcrt5000 it’s like the youless technically?
I will have a look at this

I ordered the inductive sensors from UK and will compare the methods

I´m using an Emonpi and an EmonTx from https://openenergymonitor.org/ for maybe 10 years now.
I send my data to Pimatic via Mqtt.
Gruß M.

If money doesn’t matter and you’re looking for a 3-phase energy meter which measure loads and feeds you may want to have a look at the UNIEQ-Box. A first version of the plugin for pimatic is also available. The full range of measurement attributes will be added in the next release shortly.

• http://www.posid.de/landingpages/unieq-box-opensource (German)