Energy Monitors - working? (TED, Brultech/GEM, Open Energy, etc.)

Third party integrations
1

What’s currently working for whole house energy monitoring?

TED (The Energy Detective) is one I used in the dark past (pre-automation), and a new system from then is $600+, but in the dark ages they were pretty good and reliable. However the HA integration seems to have little activity, has some reported issues on an API change, and not sure if it’s even working now?

Brutech has some very attractive stuff, and an integration in HA (though also not a lot of discussion, so not sure how much used). But their web site looks like something from the 90’s, not sure how much of a going concern they are? They are a bit more affordable than TED. Anyone using them?

Sense, Emporia and lots of cloud option - not interested in those.

Open Energy Monitor looks good, but it’s a pain to order from the UK and wait what could be weeks and hope it clears customs. I also don’t see an integration (only one for a thermostat). Is it working with HA already?

Are there others I should look at that are HA integrated already?

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Shelly EM will monitor two circuits.

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Thanks, but I’d really like a dozen or so, especially separate ones for AC, air handler, Heat pump hot water, dryer, two fridges, dishwasher. Maybe my network closet for curiousity.

4

Ok six EMs is probably a bit much.You probably wouldn’t require that many though. As the smaller appliances can be monitored with energy monitoring smart switches. Recommendations for those would depend on which country you live in.

Example of Shelly EM output, with smaller items monitored with smart plugs:

https://community.home-assistant.io/t/daily-energy-monitoring/143436

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Thank you, I do appreciate the input, but I intend to put multiple CT’s in the panel and monitor from there, not using smart switches, for a variety of reasons. Shelly also appears to be limited to 120A and I have 200A service.

I also just stumbled across Iotawatt, which is interesting - US Based (I am in the US), considerably cheaper, apparently people are integrating it with HA via REST and/or via InfluxDB. 16 CT’s supported. Seems an alternative to Open Energy Monitor, similar in openness.

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These integrate with HA.

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@sparkydave, yes, I ran across them yesterday evening. They look good, and thinking of just pulling the trigger and ordering.

Do you use them? Any specific advice? One concern I had is their minimum donut is 50A; on the good side it is solid, but is that accurate enough for low draw circuits, most of my stuff is <=15A. This is predicated on the idea for low current you want lower capacity CT’s to get higher accuracy, is that intuition born out in practice?

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The setup allows for a wide range of current transformers. Even a user defined one. So you are free to purchase a current transformer elsewhere (e.g. Aliexpress ).

selectECS24200
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https://docs.iotawatt.com/en/master/CTconfig.html

For a 15A max circuit a 20A CT would give you much better resolution than a 50A CT.

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You don’t have to order from OpenEnergyMonitor to use their open source software. All you need is a Raspberry Pi and a compatible sensor.

I use this sensor and associated CT + voltage sensors

Running SD card image with EmonCMS from OpenEnergyMonitor Github on the Pi 3B:

Using the EmonCMS integration to get data into HA. There is also a EmonCMS history integration to get HA data into EmonCMS (eg. I feed sun and per-half-hour kWh pricing info from HA into emonCMS)

The LeChacal CT sensor is very good. It updates every 30 seconds and uses voltage sensor to compare phase differences and calculates real power. (as opposed to the inaccurate apparent power if you only read current flow)


You are in luck, they have a 7 CT, 1 voltage sensor version:

With UPS shipping to US within a week (slightly expensive)

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@wyx087, thank you, I had not run across that one at all (LeChacal). They certainly hit a good price point, if I’m reading it right I could get the monitor board for 15 CT’s for around $100 (without case, etc.). Add in case, rPi3 (doesn’t mention 3B or 4), enough cards, CT’s… it ends up approaching the IoTawatt stuff, but I suspect remains cheaper. The latter looks to be a bit more commercialized and polished (not saying that’s bad or good, just commenting).

Time to decide I think… going once… anyone have others to throw on the pile?

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I have one waiting to be installed, I just haven’t had the time to do it.

There is an example of the Rest calls here.

As Tom said, you can use other CT’s with this controller and buy smaller ranged ones. I didn’t bother as I read that the 50A ones have very good low value accuracy anyway, based on user comments on this forum.

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I spent a bunch of time today trying to reconcile what I know. In case anyone else stumbles on this thread looking for considerations…

I took a circuit inventory and counting the mains, and the 240’s with neutral, I need 17 CT’s, and only about half the circuits. That’s a lot and doesn’t include any that are lighting. I could give up a couple but if I’m going to do this, I hate to start off limited. That either puts me to two separate IoTaWatts, or take it off the list. I don’t see any reason two won’t work, but I’m not sure ancillary software that I might want to use with it would be happy. Plus by then it’s up to the price of…

Brultec would work, it does a lot more (32); with their CT’s it is about $550 or so. And I know someone is working on the integration as a fix was released in .106. I’m rather leaning toward them.

The Energy Detective - I still have a soft spot for them as my very old one still works. I inquired, and they have an open API but no info about HA integration. The pull API though, as best I can tell, is for totals only, nothing at the branch circuit level. There is a push integration (they call it 3rd party) that does HTTP posts which does include that level of detail. I reviewed the current integration (not sure if it’s even working) and it’s definitely pull. I suspect it’s not that hard to accept posted data (indeed I could probably post to InfluxDB through a bit of scripting first), but… it sure would be nice if already done. I’m also disinclined to use it as they use powerline to communicate from their in-panel device to their network device, and that works great unless… well, it doesn’t. I’ve got it right now with their 1001 device, and both my office and my network closet (the two places I really want it to reach) do not work. I think it’s from noise from the UPS’s there (note I am not trying to communicate through the UPS’s, they are just on the same circuit). Their response was:

The TED Pro Home does use powerline carrier – 
but it is unlike anything you’ve seen.    
You won’t have any communication issues.

Which is interesting as I told them it is exactly what I am struggling with on their Ted 1001; not sure if they improved it or not.

The lechacal stuff is really interesting. I’m going to stare at it again this evening, but a stack of three 7/8 port ports all on top of a Pi may be just fine, but it isn’t a big confidence builder. I also worry about physical arrangement – all those wires go into the outside of the box, so I really need to put the box and all the wires in some big junction box to keep it neat, and it’s going to stand pretty far out from the wall (in a garage). All manageable I guess, but… well, going to look again.

Advice, as always, welcomed, especially if I’m misunderstanding some of these.

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13

Since you have so many, my advice is to not get carried away trying to monitor individual circuits. Instead group them together (this will only work for circuits on the same phase) by running multiple actives through the same CT. ie: all lighting circuits together. (again, only if they are the same phase).

It would work fine.

Home Assistant is all you need :grin:

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I just ordered the IoTawatt (two of them).

Since you have so many, my advice is to not get carried away trying to monitor individual circuits. Instead group them together (this will only work for circuits on the same phase) by running multiple actives through the same CT. ie: all lighting circuits together. (again, only if they are the same phase).

Yeah, unfortunately a lot of these are really short wires, especially since I moved one side down two slots to make room for a transfer switch/breaker. Dryer, oven and range all are taking 2 each since I don’t have slack to loop one around.

I really don’t want to group many of these together, for example two different fridges. I guess I can combine something like inside/outside A/C units further up in the panel since I have a choice of leg. That’s 1 less.

I already eliminated all the lighting and room outlet loads, and am lumping those together (implicitly by omission).

WIth two, I’ll put one on each side of the panel and can have neater wiring (I think I’ll put them in some kind of junction box with conduit). Biggest pain is I don’t have four outlets for the reference and power adapters (ok, I could use one reference). Maybe I can find a junction box I can somehow work an outlet inside of; the straightforward answer is put it into the wall, but it’s block (and with my luck it will be the solid filled part).

All sorts of fun things to be figured out. If they tell all of us not to leave our homes, I’ll have something to do (provided I can still sneak to home depot). :wink:

15

Got it, installed both, working great.

Now need to figure out which of the several ways is easiest to integrate Iotawatt with Home Assistant.

Gives me something to do while “social distancing”. :frowning:

16

Got the wires dressed and run properly this morning, here’s what it all looks like if anyone is curious. 18 current measurement CT’s, four voltage references (one each leg, each Iotawatt). Orbit sprinkler boxes worked nicely to house (there is a high and low voltage section divided by the panel, you can see the low, high is behind).

panel_open
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Now to figure out how to make use of it all.

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Just a followup – IoTaWatt has worked well with Home Assistant via InfluxDb and Grafana. Here’s the kind of thing I get now:

dashboard
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And because it’s Home Assistant not just Grafana, I can say “Hey google, show energy in the bedroom” and my bedroom TV looks like this:

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Haven’t figured out what to do with all the data yet but it’s really cool to HAVE all that data.

IoTaWatt itself has been rock solid, notably it buffers all the data up, and catches up if HA is down. Better, numerous times I wiped my InfluxDB database and started over, and IoTaWatt each time queries the database, looks for the latest transmission, and starts over wherever it should (including the beginning). Very neat.

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Is this data available to HA in real time for automations?

Very nice looking install! I’d love to see more pics of design decisions inside the breakout boxes.

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Is this data available to HA in real time for automations?

Yes, though you have to pick a path and implement it. You can either send it to influxdb and use it there, which is probably simplest, or have HA query IoTaWatt directly. There are probably other paths also as IoTaWatt has other tool integrations as well, that in turn might integrate with HA, but I have not looked.

I say Influxdb is simplest not because the direct is hard to access, but because a lot of the triggers you might want are easier to calculate in influxdb (like changes over time) than from HA data directly.

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If you’re up for sharing, I’d be interested in seeing your lovelace as well as any history, sensor, and utility yaml settings. I’m playing with the right way to display my whole-house energy usage.