16 ms·

A few years ago I came to the realisation that if you want people to be more environmentally conscious or economical in terms of utility consumption, (electrici

A few years ago I came to the realisation that if you want people to be more environmentally conscious or economical in terms of utility consumption, (electricity, water, gas, etc), they need far better data than a single figure per month. You want to be able to see usage to a resolution of at most 5 minutes. That way people can spot things like “having my electric heater on for those couple of hours used more electricity than all my lights use for a month”. I have an inverter and solar panels in my place (very common now in South Africa middle class homes due to unreliable electricity producer) and I can see a full history of electricity usage. It’s easy for me to see where I can improve my efficiency or why my consumption was so high. It’s still only an overall figure though, so you have to do an informed assumption as to what caused the consumption. For example it’s obvious that the 3kw draw for about an hour or so after I shower is the geyser heating itself back up. I can see from the usage stats that my battery was depleted from the night, that the solar production is still low due to my showering in the early morning and that the energy was thus coming from the grid (the inverter records all these figures). It is then obvious that I can very simply save money on electricity by putting a timer on my geyser so that it only heats after 10am or so, once the sun is high enough for solar production to cover the energy usage. Now I just wish I had something as convenient for monitoring water consumption.

isoprophlex 3y ago
About water consumption: depending on your make of water meter, there's often a small reflective wheel that turns eg. once for every liter. Sometimes these are made out of metal or even slightly magnetic. An arduino with an optical or Hall effect sensor might get you real far in real time, high resolution data collection! Alternatively I've had success in wiring up a temperature probe directly to the incoming water line, and comparing that temperature to the ambient temperature. Where I live that works because the water arrives from underground & is always much cooler than ambient air. The time-integrated difference between the two is a proxy for how much water you use... this is much more involved to get meaningful data from, tho. --- Edit: a proximity sensor that detects metal might be the most straightforward thing, if you have a water meter with a rotating metal gauge https://www.alldatasheet.com/view.jsp?Searchword=LJ12A3-4-Z/BX https://www.alldatasheet.com/view.jsp?Searchword=LJ12A3-4-Z/...
- cricalix 3y ago
  On mobile so hard to link, but memory says OpenEnergyMonitor's docs site on pulse counters has a computer vision approach too. Think it reads the numbers from the display.
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  A lot of water meters these days have rfid for the water company to scan so maybe you can just abrogate that directly
systemz 3y ago
About monitoring water consumption, maybe using some webcam + OCR would help to recognize reading of a water meter? Then Home Assistant would be helpful to see charts with energy consumption etc
- tomqueue 3y ago
  This is what I am using for this exact purpose: https://github.com/jomjol/AI-on-the-edge-device https://github.com/jomjol/AI-on-the-edge-device
8n4vidtmkvmk 3y ago
Something in my apartment is consuming a ton of power and I don't know what. I would love a graph with a resolution better than a day.
- yread 3y ago
  Check the coffee machine. Full auto espresso machines can be huge hogs
- Jedd 3y ago
  Do you have a conventional HWS? These are notoriously power-hungry, often poorly maintained and calibrated, and hard to monitor. You can buy a power meter plug - that sits between appliance and socket - and work your way around almost all your appliances apart from, typically, oven, air conditioner(s), and hot water systems. For those you're going to need to experiment by turning as many things off as you can, to establish a baseline, and review your switch meter periodically for short (several minute) intervals, with and without the larger appliances turned on. (You can get induction coil systems to report usage of these larger appliances, but they're typically onerously priced.)
  - cricalix 3y ago
    If you can isolate the legs of the larger appliances, a CT clamp sensor is sufficient for an idea, and you can get those as handheld meters with screen - or something you plug into a microcontroller board and send the data to a local collection system.
  - erhaetherth 3y ago
    What's an HWS? Hot water system...?
    - quickthrowman 3y ago
      On mechanical blueprints, HWS is the acronym I see used for hydronic heating, and DHW is what I see used for domestic hot water. I’m unsure what the OP meant.
ako 3y ago
Depending on your water meter this device may be useful: https://www.homewizard.com/watermeter/ https://www.homewizard.com/watermeter/
bradley13 3y ago
Being able to see your usage is helpful - at least, for those of us interested. For example, I was surprised to see how much our electronics (stereo, amplifier, TV, etc.) in the living room use, even when off (some devices are older, with high standby currents). It motivated me to put everything on a timer that only turns power own in the evenings, since that's the only time they get used. It's a small thing, but small things add up.
- calvinmorrison 3y ago
  Not when you're on solar. Its more akin to being poor and shopping at dollar tree - cash/solar flow is more important than total cost.
- gambiting 3y ago
  Yeah we were away from home recently and it was interesting to see that with everything "off" we were still using a constant 200W or so, so even with no one home we used just over 4kWh each day. 120kWh each month just for "idle" usage definitely is not trivial amount of money, at current prices that's £20!
  - dzhiurgis 3y ago
    Half of that is fridge which at 10 quid a month is cheap. Then another 20w for wifi router which again, looking at what you pay to your ISP is nothing. So you got 8 pounds to account for which at UKs minimum wage is about 1 hours worth of work?
    - gambiting 3y ago
      That's a weird point to make - I'm just saying 120kWh a month for a house with no one in it and just some basic appliances and network equipment is a LOT - in developing countries 120kWh would be the average energy consumption of the entire house with people living in it, and we just "waste" that because I couldn't be bothered to switch off some devices in my house. It's not about whether I can afford it or not.
failingslowly 3y ago
> if you want people to be more environmentally conscious [...] they need far better data This is one of the reasons all UK homes are being fitted for free with smart meters. (There are others, such as enabling better grid control.) > You want to be able to see usage to a resolution of at most 5 minutes. My one updates every few seconds and has a set of traffic light LEDs at the bottom giving a visible guide to energy use. https://www.edfenergy.com/smart-meters/using-a-smart-meter/chameleon-3-display https://www.edfenergy.com/smart-meters/using-a-smart-meter/c...
- albert180 3y ago
  Your Grid is operated by the french government? Is there some infrastructure you haven't sold out abroad
  - waiwai933 3y ago
    The UK energy market is complicated. The high-voltage transmission grid is operated by National Grid, which is a British company. Distribution to end-users is operated at a regional level by one of six* Distribution Network Operators [1], three of which are British-owned. Consumers can purchase electricity from any electricity supplier that is willing to sell to them. Naturally, since it all goes into one grid, suppliers are responsible for ensuring that they purchase from generators and sell to consumers an equal amount of electricity. EDF is one of several suppliers in the market. (There were many more until energy prices rose following the Russian invasion of Ukraine and many suppliers collapsed.) The gas distribution system works similarly, but I'm not familiar with the details. * It's slightly more complicated, but it rounds to six. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_network_operator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_network_operator
- gambiting 3y ago
  We have one as well, but since we're on a variable rate tariff(Octopus Tracker) it's completely useless - it doesn't know the current electricity/gas price, it seems to receive rate updates from the network about once every few weeks - so the numbers it displays are just wrong. I've made my own little Raspberry Pico display that queries today's energy prices and shows those, but I have not been able to show today's energy consumption alongside(and therefore show the day's cost so far). Octopus provides an API to query the kWh used....but only for the last day. I even got their little Octopus Mini that broadcasts live usage to their app but I have not been able to query the live data from it from my raspberry, I don't have the necessary skills in web technologies to do that unfortunately :-(
cjfd 3y ago
Sounds pretty good as such. The worry to have these days, though, is if we can also get this without energy usage data being traded between all sorts of shady companies and/or criminal organizations.
- verisimi 3y ago
  > shady companies and/or criminal organizations. You mean energy companies and governments?
  - oarsinsync 3y ago
    There was a report recently that Facebook users have their data sold to 1000-5000 companies, and Facebook takes input from up to 100k companies when compiling data on people. Supermarkets are also into the data game, exploiting the gold mine of data that is shopper loyalty cards. Smart TVs are in the data game, selling details of what you’re watching on to other people. Cars are recording visuals, audio, telemetry, and selling that on. I think it’s reasonable to assume that energy companies are selling the data they’re collecting about you onto data brokers (aka shady companies and/or criminal organisations)
- mtsr 3y ago
  Home Assistant with a connector for whatever smart meter you have will happily do this for you without the data ever leaving your home.
lloeki 3y ago
Per device energy tallies also give you interesting data. Home Assistant can do that in the Energy dashboard, and you can answer questions/learn surprising things, like how much energy my "rack" (UPS+mac mini+5 disk bay+a few other things) actually uses vs e.g my fridge or my washing machine, or my desk compute actually is quite low but boy does the screen costs a lot when active, or what does charging the electric bike costs, or what's the effect of setting thermostat to 19 instead of 20 in winter, or oh wow in summer this fan that we use a lot to make things bearable actually ends up using as much energy as our water heater! (power measurements are done using Shelly Plug Plus S + 3EM + 4PM devices, thermal measurements using Shelly H&T Plus)
- nijave 3y ago
  > like how much energy my "rack" (UPS+mac mini+5 disk bay+a few other things) actually uses I find it better to remain ignorant in that regard. Jokes aside, it's also interesting seeing wall draw vs UPS draw vs PSU draw if each piece of your equipment supports that. The Shelly stuff is also quite fun to play with (I recommend a AC adapter for H&T). I have the little black spherical sensors and the data resolution is significantly worse on battery since it tries to sleep in low power state as much as possible. It's fun to see the server cabinet (mine's enclosed) vs room vs different room temps. You can also see when the HVAC cycles on and off and when someone takes a shower (humidity spikes).
stdbrouw 3y ago
Your experience also points to the limits of monitoring and subsequent behavioral change, though. I mean, yeah, it might prompt you to start your washing machine a bit earlier or a bit later to align with high production by your solar panels... but how much consumption can you really move around like that, and how many energy hogs can you just decide to not use? If you notice high energy use while cooking, are you going to start eating more salads instead? Across Europe electricity meters are being replaced by smart meters and people are really hyping up the advantages of being able to continuously monitor your energy usage, but I think the jury is still out whether it'll actually lead to significant energy savings. Ultimately the biggest wins are when big appliances and heating/cooling respond to self-production or take advantage of times when electricity is cheap (if you're on a per-hour or per-day dynamic contract), whether that's with a simple timer like the one you installed, a relay that shuts down heating when you're cooking or something fancier like a Fronius Ohmpilot [1] that tweaks heating power to exactly match PV (over)production. [1] https://www.fronius.com/en/solar-energy/installers-partners/technical-data/all-products/solutions/fronius-solution-for-heat-generation/fronius-ohmpilot/fronius-ohmpilot https://www.fronius.com/en/solar-energy/installers-partners/...
- jonathanlydall 3y ago
  Agree completely. However, knowing that a particular device is bad means that when I eventually need to replace it in the future, I will also factor in energy efficiency and features such as it being able to check energy prices in my purchasing decision.
- helsinkiandrew 3y ago
  There's been a few simple experiments in the UK - where consumers have been encouraged to reduce usage at peak time that have been successful. But as you say its going to need the appliances to support it. Everything needs a "Get this done by X o'clock" whether thats a dishwasher/washing machine/car charger. https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/jan/23/households-great-britain-paid-use-less-electricity-cut-bills-national-grid https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/jan/23/households-gre...
  - 3y ago
teekert 3y ago
I agree fully, I believe that my Home Assistant energy dashboard has done more for our energy consumption than any other measure. If you’re in the Netherland you can get something like a “slimme lezer”, plug it into the p1 port of your energy meter and it will pop up in Home Assistant with the right sensors. The energy dashboard will give an overview of your gas and electricity usage, solar production, proportion used from grid/solar and even a home battery if present. It’s really great. Combine it with some Aqara (zigbee but easily overloaded) or Shelly (WiFi and I find them very robust) energy monitoring power sockets and you get a very good idea of the simplest measures to take to save power. You can even add cost/kWh and M3 (gas) to the sensors in HA.
- kabes 3y ago
  I have the same setup. I used it to make a green light go on when we have more than 500 watt excess solar production, so my wife knows she can turn on the washing machine for free.
  - teekert 3y ago
    That’s very cool. Btw our dishwasher (and laundry machine) has 2 peaks at 2 kW, our dryer does 500 W continuous.
    - masklinn 3y ago
      Makes sense since you're in the netherlands, euro appliances generally get fed cold water and warm it internally, the 2kW peaks would be when it needs to warm up the cold water. The dryer has to warm air up pretty continuously to dry the contents. At 500W I assume it's a heat pump? (IIRC condensers are usually around or above 1kW)
      - teekert 3y ago
        Ah yes, the dish and laundry washers are indeed not “hot fill”, that is hard to find here indeed. The dryer is a heat pump yes, some years ago it was the most energy efficient one we could find. (But I guess it runs longer, relying more on tumbling than heat, and wears out cloth faster).
zilti 3y ago
Corollary: people are cheap and lazy, so if you want them to not do something, make it cumbersome in a way that does not justify the cost difference, or vice versa.
risyachka 3y ago
I’d argue that if you want people to be environmentally friendly, you need to abstract all data, dashboards , etc, The system must just work behind the scenes and optimise energy use as much as possible automatically.
ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
I have a friend that is diabetic (a number of friends, actually). He has been doing a pretty lousy job of managing his diet. Until his doctor prescribed a monitor for a few weeks. This is a device that looks like a big Band-Aid that you put on your arm, inserting a fine needle under the skin, and communicates with an app on the phone, reporting things like glucose levels. Once he realized the effects of the foods he was eating, he immediately changed his diet, and has been sticking to it, since (he no longer wears the monitor). The UI of the app was pretty good. The historical data readout is what did it for him.
- wkjagt 3y ago
  I think even people who don’t have diabetes could benefit from this. Would having access to my own glucose levels throughout the day give me some insights into how what I eat influences my own mood, energy levels etc?
  - hgomersall 3y ago
    Yeah, it's pretty common. You can buy them for a reasonable amount and learn quite a bit: https://chemist2customer.com/freestyle-libre-2-sensor https://chemist2customer.com/freestyle-libre-2-sensor
  - masklinn 3y ago
    Might, but as a non-diabetic your body self-regulate, so you'd usually see a large increase in blood sugars followed by a large drop as insulin blood levels increase and trigger its handling. And because the sensor needle goes through the skin it must be replaced pretty regularly, and if it's not covered by insurance it's not exactly free (the link from the sibling indicates £57, that's per fortnight). My diabetic colleague was super happy when they got one though, the "beep" of their checking their BAC is pretty funny and it's definitely more comfortable and sanitary than having to prick their finger every time, plus the full history view is useful as point check means there are dark holes between checks and you might not see some of the opportunities for improvements.
    - 3y ago
slow_typist 3y ago
Thanks for sharing. Does the system supply grid voltage to your home autonomously, i.e. when the grid is offline? Does it work on all three phases? In Germany, most of the systems need the grid to be online in order to work.
tibbydudeza 3y ago
Like you I have a solar system (Sunsynk) and it gives all sorts of wonderful stats, but I hardly bother looking at it as it is meaningless information - just wish it was more intelligent to balance battery discharge vs loadshedding schedule vs weather of the day. I have to manually set things up for winter vs summer. My geyser which is not on solar is on a IOT controller (Hotbot) and I set the times I want the water to be heated and it knows when there is loadshedding (3G) so it can intelligently deviate from my set times.
DilutedMetrics 3y ago
Realtime data is nice, especially when I can get it from the source instead of having to fiddle with individual outlets. When we upgraded to smart meters in the UK (which you actually get an account credit for doing), our power company gave us a portable touch display that read from both the gas and electricity with different breakdowns of consumption.
TheRoque 3y ago
Also, we need to stop gaslighting people with fake solutions like "planting trees" or "deleting emails". Sure, it's good, but the scale is so small that you're actually losing focus on what really makes changes.
nagisa 3y ago
> Now I just wish I had something as convenient for monitoring water consumption. You can set this up non-invasively with ultrasonic flow meters like the TUF-2000M. It isn’t cheap, but it does work quite alright if you don't want any of the risks associated with cracking open your pipes. (There are also cheaper options if you don’t mind opening up your pipes too.)
yelite 3y ago
If your meter is not too old, it probably sends wireless signal for consumption data. It can be read with https://github.com/bemasher/rtlamr https://github.com/bemasher/rtlamr
nijave 3y ago
Overlaying outdoor temperature is also helpful. One degree HVAC change makes a lot bigger difference when it's 0F (-18C) vs 40F (4C) outside I've seen decent reviews on the "no plumbing required" water meters. Flume has a product available in the U.S. that gets pretty good reviews (https://www.amazon.com/Flume-Smart-Water-Monitor-Detector/dp/B08DX6MP8X https://www.amazon.com/Flume-Smart-Water-Monitor-Detector/dp...).
roland35 3y ago
The Sense system is great for this, gives you second level data, and identifies most appliances when they turn on. I enjoy using it!
barelyauser 3y ago
This problem can easily be solved without any device at all. Of course, it demands education and "intelligent behavior". If people only had the curiosity to read the specs on a heater and see "2000W" of power, and compare it to "15W" of power on the specs of the LED bulb. Same for water. One can just place a bowl under the faucet and measure the time it takes to fill up. Now you have your water consumption rate. We can choose the "device based" route, but this road end with Idiocracy and problems so "big" nobody can solve them.
- argiopetech 3y ago
  If we're comparing apples to apples all the time, sure. I think it's pretty obvious to most people who care to look that a 60w conventional bulb uses more energy than a 15w LED bulb (which, for the record, is the 100w conventional equivalent). Consider, however, these questions: If my 2000w heater is running on the 800w setting and turns on when my room has dropped below the point I consider acceptably chilly and turns off above that point, how much electricity have I used in the last hour? If I have 3 15w LEDs on a dimmer and run them intermittently throughout the day, how much electricity have I used in the last hour? If my TV is off, but plugged in, and accesses the Internet a few times a day automatically to check for new versions, how much power has it used today? I think this makes the case for, at least, a kill-a-watt style device. A whole home solution with sufficient report granularity and a report interface visible in the home would be worth the extra trouble, IMHO. Edit: For the record, these are all real-scenarios from my house.
  - mnw21cam 3y ago
    A while ago I bought one of those plug-in power monitors, and went around measuring everything I could find around the house. It's a worthwhile exercise, I think. You can leave an appliance plugged into it for as long as you like to get an average. I was able to make a pie chart of where my electricity is used in my house, which was enlightening, and led to some useful changes.
  - quickthrowman 3y ago
    > I think this makes the case for, at least, a kill-a-watt style device. A whole home solution with sufficient report granularity and a report interface visible in the home would be worth the extra trouble, IMHO. You can have per circuit monitoring, you need a CT for each hot conductor and a submeter with enough CT inputs for all of the circuits in your panelboard.
SergeAx 3y ago
Unpopular opinion: shifting environmental blame to individual consumers is a form of gaslighting (pun not intended, but still good). You may use spend a fortune on solar, heating pumps and A-clsss appliances, but will never save a fraction of power consumption of a single datacenter cabinet or aluminium furnace. One large enough manufacturing plant cancels out all environmental initiatives of a medium town, including public spaces.
runamok 3y ago
SDGE started breaking down our energy usage by "type" a few months ago. Not exactly sure how but they can categorize things as laundry, lights, entertainment, computers, always on, etc. There are some screenshots here that kind of give you the idea: https://www.sdge.com/energy-management-tool https://www.sdge.com/energy-management-tool
- andirk 3y ago
  My PGE (Bay area) does the same but I'm pretty sure it's an estimate according to house size, # of people, and a questionnaire I filled out such as "how many times do you run the dishwasher per week". Your house pulls electricity through the breaker box or doesn't. Then again, it's possible different appliances have a specific electrical signatures like +5KWH x 1.5 hours = dishwasher.
  - mcbishop 3y ago
    > I'm pretty sure it's an estimate Yeah, I (cynically) assume this utility-provided breakdown data is worthless. There's no way around circuit-level monitoring.
  - runamok 3y ago
    I was on mobile and unable to find it but here it is: https://sdge.bidgely.com/dashboard/faqs https://sdge.bidgely.com/dashboard/faqs How does it work? Magic? Not really. Each appliance uses electricity in a unique manner - think of it like an appliance fingerprint. We detect and extract these "fingerprints" and convert the data into useful insights and recommendations.
cwassert 3y ago
I second this wholeheartedly. As a toy project I put a raspi with a small screen in my living room that would show the temperature and humidity for the last three days as a graph. It was somewhat of an eye catcher in the living room. The data was always interesting. Even if the humidity did not change much, at the very least you could always see that it was colder during the nights, which told me it was working. It taught me so many things. The effect of opening the windows short vs. long on temperature and humidity. That the sun shining into my room was way more effective then my heating. How the temperature goes down exponentially when my heating turns off, and how the length of the of/off cycles depend on the temperature outside. Etc.
ahrjay 3y ago
In my home state of Victoria Australia the government had a program to give out these powerpal[1] units for free that could measure your usage in realtime using the flashing led on our smart meters, we also require all energy grid operators (the people who own the poles and wires) to have an energy portal where users can get near realtime data to the nearest 30mins, soon to be 5 with some new legislation. The former most people have no idea about but the powerpal has been a smashing success for consumers to understand what is using energy. [1] https://www.powerpal.net/ https://www.powerpal.net/
HPsquared 3y ago
Instead of a single usage figure per month, it should be a cumulative line chart with high resolution, preferably zoomable. The customer would see long periods of almost nothing, and occasional big jumps (e.g. When the heater is on).
- jonathanlydall 3y ago
  Exactly.
jokethrowaway 3y ago
It's ridiculous we don't have unlimited free or almost free energy, the future truly sucks. Likewise it's ridiculous devices are not automatically saving energy when unused, it's such a simple change it should be standard. Asking the user to worry about it should not be needed. That's the goal we should strive for. For now monitoring will have to do but I think a combination of solar + iron air battery will make everybody living in a sunny-enough place independent from the grid with ample margin - and we can supply the rest with nuclear.
BrandoElFollito 3y ago
I had this hope when the energy companies in France installed the national "smart meter" (Linky). It was a fun story because it was linked to spying you at home, 5G, COVID and radiation. Unfortunately this is a closed system where the energy company will not let you access the data outside of their own dashboard. I would like to think that this is against the national trend toward Open Data but it is what it is. There are some funky solutions where you connect a board to an input of the meter and somehow get the data in Home Assistant but it is like I said "funky" (completely guerilla style, without any backing of the power company and if you have a problem it will probably be your fault).
- didntcheck 3y ago
  > It was a fun story because it was linked to spying you at home, 5G, COVID and radiation. The first of those is a genuine concern > In Australia debt collectors can make use of the data to know when people are at home.[63] Used as evidence in a court case in Austin, Texas, police agencies secretly collected smart meter power usage data from thousands of residences to determine which used more power than "typical" to identify marijuana growing operations.[64] > Smart meter power data usage patterns can reveal much more than how much power is being used. Research has demonstrated that smart meters sampling power levels at two-second intervals can reliably identify when different electrical devices are in use. from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_meter#Privacy_concerns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_meter#Privacy_concerns IIRC my smart meter in the UK lets me choose between 30m and 24h reporting, probably as a response to these fears, but you just set it as a preference on the provider website, not locally on the meter. It would be trivial for them to just be lying about that and logging data to GCHQ at the maximum precision. That may seem outlandish, but so did PRISM until it was revealed Some people also refuse to have one so that they can't be forced onto a dynamic-priced tariff. At the moment those are opt-in, but I think their concern is a fair one too. Though if the powers that be wanted to coerce people onto them, they could simply crank the price of fixed tariffs anyway
  - BrandoElFollito 3y ago
    This is physics. You get a power usage and you can imagine which kind of device pulls the energy. With some context you can even guess that I switched on my water boiler at 19:45 and yes, you would know that I drank tea or coffee. As for burglars, they will know that I am away statistically during the day. Which is not only predictable, but they can get the exact moment I leave by simply watching my house. This reminds me of a friend who was worried that someone would hack my smart lock. To what I said that I would LOVE them to hack it instead of breaking the door as they will do. I can understand that some people are super scared about being spied on - and their consumption should be checked once a month when they have tp pay. Some people would like to measure it in 1 second intervals and they should be accommodated as well.
31337Logic 3y ago
Great post! Also, TIL that South Africans call their water heaters "geysers". ;-)

isoprophlex 3y ago

About water consumption: depending on your make of water meter, there's often a small reflective wheel that turns eg. once for every liter. Sometimes these are made out of metal or even slightly magnetic. An arduino with an optical or Hall effect sensor might get you real far in real time, high resolution data collection! Alternatively I've had success in wiring up a temperature probe directly to the incoming water line, and comparing that temperature to the ambient temperature. Where I live that works because the water arrives from underground & is always much cooler than ambient air. The time-integrated difference between the two is a proxy for how much water you use... this is much more involved to get meaningful data from, tho. --- Edit: a proximity sensor that detects metal might be the most straightforward thing, if you have a water meter with a rotating metal gauge https://www.alldatasheet.com/view.jsp?Searchword=LJ12A3-4-Z/BX https://www.alldatasheet.com/view.jsp?Searchword=LJ12A3-4-Z/...

cricalix 3y ago
On mobile so hard to link, but memory says OpenEnergyMonitor's docs site on pulse counters has a computer vision approach too. Think it reads the numbers from the display.
kjkjadksj 3y ago
A lot of water meters these days have rfid for the water company to scan so maybe you can just abrogate that directly

systemz 3y ago

About monitoring water consumption, maybe using some webcam + OCR would help to recognize reading of a water meter? Then Home Assistant would be helpful to see charts with energy consumption etc

tomqueue 3y ago
This is what I am using for this exact purpose: https://github.com/jomjol/AI-on-the-edge-device https://github.com/jomjol/AI-on-the-edge-device

8n4vidtmkvmk 3y ago

Something in my apartment is consuming a ton of power and I don't know what. I would love a graph with a resolution better than a day.

yread 3y ago
Check the coffee machine. Full auto espresso machines can be huge hogs
Jedd 3y ago
Do you have a conventional HWS? These are notoriously power-hungry, often poorly maintained and calibrated, and hard to monitor. You can buy a power meter plug - that sits between appliance and socket - and work your way around almost all your appliances apart from, typically, oven, air conditioner(s), and hot water systems. For those you're going to need to experiment by turning as many things off as you can, to establish a baseline, and review your switch meter periodically for short (several minute) intervals, with and without the larger appliances turned on. (You can get induction coil systems to report usage of these larger appliances, but they're typically onerously priced.)
- cricalix 3y ago
  If you can isolate the legs of the larger appliances, a CT clamp sensor is sufficient for an idea, and you can get those as handheld meters with screen - or something you plug into a microcontroller board and send the data to a local collection system.
- erhaetherth 3y ago
  What's an HWS? Hot water system...?
  - quickthrowman 3y ago
    On mechanical blueprints, HWS is the acronym I see used for hydronic heating, and DHW is what I see used for domestic hot water. I’m unsure what the OP meant.

ako 3y ago

Depending on your water meter this device may be useful: https://www.homewizard.com/watermeter/ https://www.homewizard.com/watermeter/

bradley13 3y ago

Being able to see your usage is helpful - at least, for those of us interested. For example, I was surprised to see how much our electronics (stereo, amplifier, TV, etc.) in the living room use, even when off (some devices are older, with high standby currents). It motivated me to put everything on a timer that only turns power own in the evenings, since that's the only time they get used. It's a small thing, but small things add up.

calvinmorrison 3y ago
Not when you're on solar. Its more akin to being poor and shopping at dollar tree - cash/solar flow is more important than total cost.
gambiting 3y ago
Yeah we were away from home recently and it was interesting to see that with everything "off" we were still using a constant 200W or so, so even with no one home we used just over 4kWh each day. 120kWh each month just for "idle" usage definitely is not trivial amount of money, at current prices that's £20!
- dzhiurgis 3y ago
  Half of that is fridge which at 10 quid a month is cheap. Then another 20w for wifi router which again, looking at what you pay to your ISP is nothing. So you got 8 pounds to account for which at UKs minimum wage is about 1 hours worth of work?
  - gambiting 3y ago
    That's a weird point to make - I'm just saying 120kWh a month for a house with no one in it and just some basic appliances and network equipment is a LOT - in developing countries 120kWh would be the average energy consumption of the entire house with people living in it, and we just "waste" that because I couldn't be bothered to switch off some devices in my house. It's not about whether I can afford it or not.

failingslowly 3y ago

> if you want people to be more environmentally conscious [...] they need far better data This is one of the reasons all UK homes are being fitted for free with smart meters. (There are others, such as enabling better grid control.) > You want to be able to see usage to a resolution of at most 5 minutes. My one updates every few seconds and has a set of traffic light LEDs at the bottom giving a visible guide to energy use. https://www.edfenergy.com/smart-meters/using-a-smart-meter/chameleon-3-display https://www.edfenergy.com/smart-meters/using-a-smart-meter/c...

albert180 3y ago
Your Grid is operated by the french government? Is there some infrastructure you haven't sold out abroad
- waiwai933 3y ago
  The UK energy market is complicated. The high-voltage transmission grid is operated by National Grid, which is a British company. Distribution to end-users is operated at a regional level by one of six* Distribution Network Operators [1], three of which are British-owned. Consumers can purchase electricity from any electricity supplier that is willing to sell to them. Naturally, since it all goes into one grid, suppliers are responsible for ensuring that they purchase from generators and sell to consumers an equal amount of electricity. EDF is one of several suppliers in the market. (There were many more until energy prices rose following the Russian invasion of Ukraine and many suppliers collapsed.) The gas distribution system works similarly, but I'm not familiar with the details. * It's slightly more complicated, but it rounds to six. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_network_operator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_network_operator
gambiting 3y ago
We have one as well, but since we're on a variable rate tariff(Octopus Tracker) it's completely useless - it doesn't know the current electricity/gas price, it seems to receive rate updates from the network about once every few weeks - so the numbers it displays are just wrong. I've made my own little Raspberry Pico display that queries today's energy prices and shows those, but I have not been able to show today's energy consumption alongside(and therefore show the day's cost so far). Octopus provides an API to query the kWh used....but only for the last day. I even got their little Octopus Mini that broadcasts live usage to their app but I have not been able to query the live data from it from my raspberry, I don't have the necessary skills in web technologies to do that unfortunately :-(

cjfd 3y ago

Sounds pretty good as such. The worry to have these days, though, is if we can also get this without energy usage data being traded between all sorts of shady companies and/or criminal organizations.

verisimi 3y ago
> shady companies and/or criminal organizations. You mean energy companies and governments?
- oarsinsync 3y ago
  There was a report recently that Facebook users have their data sold to 1000-5000 companies, and Facebook takes input from up to 100k companies when compiling data on people. Supermarkets are also into the data game, exploiting the gold mine of data that is shopper loyalty cards. Smart TVs are in the data game, selling details of what you’re watching on to other people. Cars are recording visuals, audio, telemetry, and selling that on. I think it’s reasonable to assume that energy companies are selling the data they’re collecting about you onto data brokers (aka shady companies and/or criminal organisations)
mtsr 3y ago
Home Assistant with a connector for whatever smart meter you have will happily do this for you without the data ever leaving your home.

lloeki 3y ago

Per device energy tallies also give you interesting data. Home Assistant can do that in the Energy dashboard, and you can answer questions/learn surprising things, like how much energy my "rack" (UPS+mac mini+5 disk bay+a few other things) actually uses vs e.g my fridge or my washing machine, or my desk compute actually is quite low but boy does the screen costs a lot when active, or what does charging the electric bike costs, or what's the effect of setting thermostat to 19 instead of 20 in winter, or oh wow in summer this fan that we use a lot to make things bearable actually ends up using as much energy as our water heater! (power measurements are done using Shelly Plug Plus S + 3EM + 4PM devices, thermal measurements using Shelly H&T Plus)

nijave 3y ago
> like how much energy my "rack" (UPS+mac mini+5 disk bay+a few other things) actually uses I find it better to remain ignorant in that regard. Jokes aside, it's also interesting seeing wall draw vs UPS draw vs PSU draw if each piece of your equipment supports that. The Shelly stuff is also quite fun to play with (I recommend a AC adapter for H&T). I have the little black spherical sensors and the data resolution is significantly worse on battery since it tries to sleep in low power state as much as possible. It's fun to see the server cabinet (mine's enclosed) vs room vs different room temps. You can also see when the HVAC cycles on and off and when someone takes a shower (humidity spikes).

stdbrouw 3y ago

Your experience also points to the limits of monitoring and subsequent behavioral change, though. I mean, yeah, it might prompt you to start your washing machine a bit earlier or a bit later to align with high production by your solar panels... but how much consumption can you really move around like that, and how many energy hogs can you just decide to not use? If you notice high energy use while cooking, are you going to start eating more salads instead? Across Europe electricity meters are being replaced by smart meters and people are really hyping up the advantages of being able to continuously monitor your energy usage, but I think the jury is still out whether it'll actually lead to significant energy savings. Ultimately the biggest wins are when big appliances and heating/cooling respond to self-production or take advantage of times when electricity is cheap (if you're on a per-hour or per-day dynamic contract), whether that's with a simple timer like the one you installed, a relay that shuts down heating when you're cooking or something fancier like a Fronius Ohmpilot [1] that tweaks heating power to exactly match PV (over)production. [1] https://www.fronius.com/en/solar-energy/installers-partners/technical-data/all-products/solutions/fronius-solution-for-heat-generation/fronius-ohmpilot/fronius-ohmpilot https://www.fronius.com/en/solar-energy/installers-partners/...

jonathanlydall 3y ago
Agree completely. However, knowing that a particular device is bad means that when I eventually need to replace it in the future, I will also factor in energy efficiency and features such as it being able to check energy prices in my purchasing decision.
helsinkiandrew 3y ago
There's been a few simple experiments in the UK - where consumers have been encouraged to reduce usage at peak time that have been successful. But as you say its going to need the appliances to support it. Everything needs a "Get this done by X o'clock" whether thats a dishwasher/washing machine/car charger. https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/jan/23/households-great-britain-paid-use-less-electricity-cut-bills-national-grid https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/jan/23/households-gre...
- 3y ago

teekert 3y ago

I agree fully, I believe that my Home Assistant energy dashboard has done more for our energy consumption than any other measure. If you’re in the Netherland you can get something like a “slimme lezer”, plug it into the p1 port of your energy meter and it will pop up in Home Assistant with the right sensors. The energy dashboard will give an overview of your gas and electricity usage, solar production, proportion used from grid/solar and even a home battery if present. It’s really great. Combine it with some Aqara (zigbee but easily overloaded) or Shelly (WiFi and I find them very robust) energy monitoring power sockets and you get a very good idea of the simplest measures to take to save power. You can even add cost/kWh and M3 (gas) to the sensors in HA.

kabes 3y ago
I have the same setup. I used it to make a green light go on when we have more than 500 watt excess solar production, so my wife knows she can turn on the washing machine for free.
- teekert 3y ago
  That’s very cool. Btw our dishwasher (and laundry machine) has 2 peaks at 2 kW, our dryer does 500 W continuous.
  - masklinn 3y ago
    Makes sense since you're in the netherlands, euro appliances generally get fed cold water and warm it internally, the 2kW peaks would be when it needs to warm up the cold water. The dryer has to warm air up pretty continuously to dry the contents. At 500W I assume it's a heat pump? (IIRC condensers are usually around or above 1kW)
    - teekert 3y ago
      Ah yes, the dish and laundry washers are indeed not “hot fill”, that is hard to find here indeed. The dryer is a heat pump yes, some years ago it was the most energy efficient one we could find. (But I guess it runs longer, relying more on tumbling than heat, and wears out cloth faster).

zilti 3y ago

Corollary: people are cheap and lazy, so if you want them to not do something, make it cumbersome in a way that does not justify the cost difference, or vice versa.

risyachka 3y ago

I’d argue that if you want people to be environmentally friendly, you need to abstract all data, dashboards , etc, The system must just work behind the scenes and optimise energy use as much as possible automatically.

ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago

I have a friend that is diabetic (a number of friends, actually). He has been doing a pretty lousy job of managing his diet. Until his doctor prescribed a monitor for a few weeks. This is a device that looks like a big Band-Aid that you put on your arm, inserting a fine needle under the skin, and communicates with an app on the phone, reporting things like glucose levels. Once he realized the effects of the foods he was eating, he immediately changed his diet, and has been sticking to it, since (he no longer wears the monitor). The UI of the app was pretty good. The historical data readout is what did it for him.

wkjagt 3y ago
I think even people who don’t have diabetes could benefit from this. Would having access to my own glucose levels throughout the day give me some insights into how what I eat influences my own mood, energy levels etc?
- hgomersall 3y ago
  Yeah, it's pretty common. You can buy them for a reasonable amount and learn quite a bit: https://chemist2customer.com/freestyle-libre-2-sensor https://chemist2customer.com/freestyle-libre-2-sensor
- masklinn 3y ago
  Might, but as a non-diabetic your body self-regulate, so you'd usually see a large increase in blood sugars followed by a large drop as insulin blood levels increase and trigger its handling. And because the sensor needle goes through the skin it must be replaced pretty regularly, and if it's not covered by insurance it's not exactly free (the link from the sibling indicates £57, that's per fortnight). My diabetic colleague was super happy when they got one though, the "beep" of their checking their BAC is pretty funny and it's definitely more comfortable and sanitary than having to prick their finger every time, plus the full history view is useful as point check means there are dark holes between checks and you might not see some of the opportunities for improvements.
  - 3y ago

slow_typist 3y ago

Thanks for sharing. Does the system supply grid voltage to your home autonomously, i.e. when the grid is offline? Does it work on all three phases? In Germany, most of the systems need the grid to be online in order to work.

tibbydudeza 3y ago

Like you I have a solar system (Sunsynk) and it gives all sorts of wonderful stats, but I hardly bother looking at it as it is meaningless information - just wish it was more intelligent to balance battery discharge vs loadshedding schedule vs weather of the day. I have to manually set things up for winter vs summer. My geyser which is not on solar is on a IOT controller (Hotbot) and I set the times I want the water to be heated and it knows when there is loadshedding (3G) so it can intelligently deviate from my set times.

DilutedMetrics 3y ago

Realtime data is nice, especially when I can get it from the source instead of having to fiddle with individual outlets. When we upgraded to smart meters in the UK (which you actually get an account credit for doing), our power company gave us a portable touch display that read from both the gas and electricity with different breakdowns of consumption.

TheRoque 3y ago

Also, we need to stop gaslighting people with fake solutions like "planting trees" or "deleting emails". Sure, it's good, but the scale is so small that you're actually losing focus on what really makes changes.

nagisa 3y ago

> Now I just wish I had something as convenient for monitoring water consumption. You can set this up non-invasively with ultrasonic flow meters like the TUF-2000M. It isn’t cheap, but it does work quite alright if you don't want any of the risks associated with cracking open your pipes. (There are also cheaper options if you don’t mind opening up your pipes too.)

yelite 3y ago

If your meter is not too old, it probably sends wireless signal for consumption data. It can be read with https://github.com/bemasher/rtlamr https://github.com/bemasher/rtlamr

nijave 3y ago

Overlaying outdoor temperature is also helpful. One degree HVAC change makes a lot bigger difference when it's 0F (-18C) vs 40F (4C) outside I've seen decent reviews on the "no plumbing required" water meters. Flume has a product available in the U.S. that gets pretty good reviews (https://www.amazon.com/Flume-Smart-Water-Monitor-Detector/dp/B08DX6MP8X https://www.amazon.com/Flume-Smart-Water-Monitor-Detector/dp...).

roland35 3y ago

The Sense system is great for this, gives you second level data, and identifies most appliances when they turn on. I enjoy using it!

barelyauser 3y ago

This problem can easily be solved without any device at all. Of course, it demands education and "intelligent behavior". If people only had the curiosity to read the specs on a heater and see "2000W" of power, and compare it to "15W" of power on the specs of the LED bulb. Same for water. One can just place a bowl under the faucet and measure the time it takes to fill up. Now you have your water consumption rate. We can choose the "device based" route, but this road end with Idiocracy and problems so "big" nobody can solve them.

argiopetech 3y ago
If we're comparing apples to apples all the time, sure. I think it's pretty obvious to most people who care to look that a 60w conventional bulb uses more energy than a 15w LED bulb (which, for the record, is the 100w conventional equivalent). Consider, however, these questions: If my 2000w heater is running on the 800w setting and turns on when my room has dropped below the point I consider acceptably chilly and turns off above that point, how much electricity have I used in the last hour? If I have 3 15w LEDs on a dimmer and run them intermittently throughout the day, how much electricity have I used in the last hour? If my TV is off, but plugged in, and accesses the Internet a few times a day automatically to check for new versions, how much power has it used today? I think this makes the case for, at least, a kill-a-watt style device. A whole home solution with sufficient report granularity and a report interface visible in the home would be worth the extra trouble, IMHO. Edit: For the record, these are all real-scenarios from my house.
- mnw21cam 3y ago
  A while ago I bought one of those plug-in power monitors, and went around measuring everything I could find around the house. It's a worthwhile exercise, I think. You can leave an appliance plugged into it for as long as you like to get an average. I was able to make a pie chart of where my electricity is used in my house, which was enlightening, and led to some useful changes.
- quickthrowman 3y ago
  > I think this makes the case for, at least, a kill-a-watt style device. A whole home solution with sufficient report granularity and a report interface visible in the home would be worth the extra trouble, IMHO. You can have per circuit monitoring, you need a CT for each hot conductor and a submeter with enough CT inputs for all of the circuits in your panelboard.

SergeAx 3y ago

Unpopular opinion: shifting environmental blame to individual consumers is a form of gaslighting (pun not intended, but still good). You may use spend a fortune on solar, heating pumps and A-clsss appliances, but will never save a fraction of power consumption of a single datacenter cabinet or aluminium furnace. One large enough manufacturing plant cancels out all environmental initiatives of a medium town, including public spaces.

runamok 3y ago

SDGE started breaking down our energy usage by "type" a few months ago. Not exactly sure how but they can categorize things as laundry, lights, entertainment, computers, always on, etc. There are some screenshots here that kind of give you the idea: https://www.sdge.com/energy-management-tool https://www.sdge.com/energy-management-tool

andirk 3y ago
My PGE (Bay area) does the same but I'm pretty sure it's an estimate according to house size, # of people, and a questionnaire I filled out such as "how many times do you run the dishwasher per week". Your house pulls electricity through the breaker box or doesn't. Then again, it's possible different appliances have a specific electrical signatures like +5KWH x 1.5 hours = dishwasher.
- mcbishop 3y ago
  > I'm pretty sure it's an estimate Yeah, I (cynically) assume this utility-provided breakdown data is worthless. There's no way around circuit-level monitoring.
- runamok 3y ago
  I was on mobile and unable to find it but here it is: https://sdge.bidgely.com/dashboard/faqs https://sdge.bidgely.com/dashboard/faqs How does it work? Magic? Not really. Each appliance uses electricity in a unique manner - think of it like an appliance fingerprint. We detect and extract these "fingerprints" and convert the data into useful insights and recommendations.

cwassert 3y ago

I second this wholeheartedly. As a toy project I put a raspi with a small screen in my living room that would show the temperature and humidity for the last three days as a graph. It was somewhat of an eye catcher in the living room. The data was always interesting. Even if the humidity did not change much, at the very least you could always see that it was colder during the nights, which told me it was working. It taught me so many things. The effect of opening the windows short vs. long on temperature and humidity. That the sun shining into my room was way more effective then my heating. How the temperature goes down exponentially when my heating turns off, and how the length of the of/off cycles depend on the temperature outside. Etc.

ahrjay 3y ago

In my home state of Victoria Australia the government had a program to give out these powerpal[1] units for free that could measure your usage in realtime using the flashing led on our smart meters, we also require all energy grid operators (the people who own the poles and wires) to have an energy portal where users can get near realtime data to the nearest 30mins, soon to be 5 with some new legislation. The former most people have no idea about but the powerpal has been a smashing success for consumers to understand what is using energy. [1] https://www.powerpal.net/ https://www.powerpal.net/

HPsquared 3y ago

Instead of a single usage figure per month, it should be a cumulative line chart with high resolution, preferably zoomable. The customer would see long periods of almost nothing, and occasional big jumps (e.g. When the heater is on).

jonathanlydall 3y ago
Exactly.

jokethrowaway 3y ago

It's ridiculous we don't have unlimited free or almost free energy, the future truly sucks. Likewise it's ridiculous devices are not automatically saving energy when unused, it's such a simple change it should be standard. Asking the user to worry about it should not be needed. That's the goal we should strive for. For now monitoring will have to do but I think a combination of solar + iron air battery will make everybody living in a sunny-enough place independent from the grid with ample margin - and we can supply the rest with nuclear.

BrandoElFollito 3y ago

I had this hope when the energy companies in France installed the national "smart meter" (Linky). It was a fun story because it was linked to spying you at home, 5G, COVID and radiation. Unfortunately this is a closed system where the energy company will not let you access the data outside of their own dashboard. I would like to think that this is against the national trend toward Open Data but it is what it is. There are some funky solutions where you connect a board to an input of the meter and somehow get the data in Home Assistant but it is like I said "funky" (completely guerilla style, without any backing of the power company and if you have a problem it will probably be your fault).

didntcheck 3y ago
> It was a fun story because it was linked to spying you at home, 5G, COVID and radiation. The first of those is a genuine concern > In Australia debt collectors can make use of the data to know when people are at home.[63] Used as evidence in a court case in Austin, Texas, police agencies secretly collected smart meter power usage data from thousands of residences to determine which used more power than "typical" to identify marijuana growing operations.[64] > Smart meter power data usage patterns can reveal much more than how much power is being used. Research has demonstrated that smart meters sampling power levels at two-second intervals can reliably identify when different electrical devices are in use. from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_meter#Privacy_concerns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_meter#Privacy_concerns IIRC my smart meter in the UK lets me choose between 30m and 24h reporting, probably as a response to these fears, but you just set it as a preference on the provider website, not locally on the meter. It would be trivial for them to just be lying about that and logging data to GCHQ at the maximum precision. That may seem outlandish, but so did PRISM until it was revealed Some people also refuse to have one so that they can't be forced onto a dynamic-priced tariff. At the moment those are opt-in, but I think their concern is a fair one too. Though if the powers that be wanted to coerce people onto them, they could simply crank the price of fixed tariffs anyway
- BrandoElFollito 3y ago
  This is physics. You get a power usage and you can imagine which kind of device pulls the energy. With some context you can even guess that I switched on my water boiler at 19:45 and yes, you would know that I drank tea or coffee. As for burglars, they will know that I am away statistically during the day. Which is not only predictable, but they can get the exact moment I leave by simply watching my house. This reminds me of a friend who was worried that someone would hack my smart lock. To what I said that I would LOVE them to hack it instead of breaking the door as they will do. I can understand that some people are super scared about being spied on - and their consumption should be checked once a month when they have tp pay. Some people would like to measure it in 1 second intervals and they should be accommodated as well.

31337Logic 3y ago

Great post! Also, TIL that South Africans call their water heaters "geysers". ;-)