4 ms·

Not quite every socket, but iotawatt can monitor each circuit at the breaker panel, and from there, it's generally not too hard to figure out what's going on, a

by ericd 2y ago

Not quite every socket, but iotawatt can monitor each circuit at the breaker panel, and from there, it's generally not too hard to figure out what's going on, and it's really nice to be able to get a concrete sense of where your electricity is going (for most people with a heat pump, it's mostly the heat pump, it swamps even our EV). It's local-only, no cloudiness, and it's been rock-solid for us.

dap 2y ago
This sounds pretty cool. I just went through the docs but I can’t tell physically how you install the CTs. Our mains come into the house underground and into the electrical panel and of course the wiring is all in the walls. Are you supposed to open up the walls and attach the CTs to the wiring in the walls? How would this even work for Romex that runs along framing?
- quickthrowman 2y ago
  The CTs go inside your panelboard around each hot conductor. The CT leads go back to a separate meter enclosure. Here’s a commercial grade submeter cutsheet with a diagram to illustrate: https://leviton.com/content/dam/leviton/lighting-controls/controls/product_documents/product_specification/Series_8000_Submeters_Data_Sheet_Submeter_VerifEye_Submetering_REV_OCT_2022.pdf https://leviton.com/content/dam/leviton/lighting-controls/co...
- ericd 2y ago
  You just turn off your main breaker, open up the panel, and snap the CTs/current transformers around one of the wires on each circuit (you can open them back up if you mess up). You only want to put one wire through, rather than a full romex bundle, because it measures the flux through the loop, and the return path would cancel out the reading. It does take a bit of reading to figure out eg what to do with 240v circuits (you can usually double it if you don’t care about absolute precision, usually one leg has the control electronics on it and is a bit higher). Also, it doesn’t have quite as many channels as most panels’ max # of circuits, so you might have to choose, or try to run multiple wires through one CT. If you’re uncomfortable with going into the panel (reasonable), you can probably find an electrician that’s willing to put it in/make it pretty. I think I saw some YouTube videos of people installing them diy before I tried, that might help get you more comfortable with the process.

by ericd 2y ago

dap 2y ago

This sounds pretty cool. I just went through the docs but I can’t tell physically how you install the CTs. Our mains come into the house underground and into the electrical panel and of course the wiring is all in the walls. Are you supposed to open up the walls and attach the CTs to the wiring in the walls? How would this even work for Romex that runs along framing?

quickthrowman 2y ago
The CTs go inside your panelboard around each hot conductor. The CT leads go back to a separate meter enclosure. Here’s a commercial grade submeter cutsheet with a diagram to illustrate: https://leviton.com/content/dam/leviton/lighting-controls/controls/product_documents/product_specification/Series_8000_Submeters_Data_Sheet_Submeter_VerifEye_Submetering_REV_OCT_2022.pdf https://leviton.com/content/dam/leviton/lighting-controls/co...
ericd 2y ago
You just turn off your main breaker, open up the panel, and snap the CTs/current transformers around one of the wires on each circuit (you can open them back up if you mess up). You only want to put one wire through, rather than a full romex bundle, because it measures the flux through the loop, and the return path would cancel out the reading. It does take a bit of reading to figure out eg what to do with 240v circuits (you can usually double it if you don’t care about absolute precision, usually one leg has the control electronics on it and is a bit higher). Also, it doesn’t have quite as many channels as most panels’ max # of circuits, so you might have to choose, or try to run multiple wires through one CT. If you’re uncomfortable with going into the panel (reasonable), you can probably find an electrician that’s willing to put it in/make it pretty. I think I saw some YouTube videos of people installing them diy before I tried, that might help get you more comfortable with the process.