Your recommendations to make our energy network smart

Hardware
1

Hi, Hope you all doing well!

I run a small business in electricity distribution and have 1000+ subscriber, I would like to implement a smart switch to switch the power on/off for each individual client anytime remotely through a local network.

All clients have Electronic Kwh Meter so I need to come up with a solution to control them remotely, one of the solutions would be installing a smart reliable wifi circuit breaker but this will be expensive, other solution would be installing a sonoff POW switch before the meter which will be less expensive.

But my main concerns are:
1- sonoff current and power limitations as switch can handle 16A and 3500W at max which is fine for 70% of our clients consumption.
2- connecting hundreds of smart switches in the network and kind of issues we would face!

I would like to hear your opinions about the best and affordable approach to take in order to achieve having a smart-remotely control over a non-smart energy network.

Appreciate your advises in advance.

2

Just to clarify, are these 1000+ subscribers all in different locations and you have a remote connection to each of them separately or all they all in a single network and you connect remotely to this network?

1 Like
3

@Burningstone

Those subscribers are in one area, we don’t have any remote connection with any of them.

To clarify we deliver electricity from a power station through cables to each house and each house has an energy meter which is not smart to be controlled from the power station.

Currently if we want to switch off/on the power of a specific house we need to go to it and deal with that from the meter end, what I’m trying to achieve is giving us the ability to switch off/on the power remotely from the system.

4

I’m not sure where you are in the world but you’d need a device that connects over the mobile network, which controls a high current contactor.
You wouldn’t be able to use their WiFi or anything powered from their house as it would be turned off when you turn off the switch.
Flipping people’s power without giving them an opportunity to power down computers, machinery etc is poor form. Why do you need this ability?
I would be willing to bet that within a short period many of the devices would be overridden by the residents

5

But they are not in one network, as in a Computer network?

Then how do you want to control the sonoffs or whatever you install in the individual subscribers home?

6

But they are not in one network, as in a Computer network?

What I meant by the “network” is the electricity network. Now I got that you meant Computer network

Then how do you want to control the sonoffs or whatever you install in the individual subscribers home?

We will cover the area with a wifi network.

7

You wouldn’t be able to use their WiFi or anything powered from their house as it would be turned off when you turn off the switch.

switches will be supplied with power from our end.

Flipping people’s power without giving them an opportunity to power down computers, machinery etc is poor form. Why do you need this ability?
I would be willing to bet that within a short period many of the devices would be overridden by the residents

Voltage is stable, and we take all necessary safety procedures.

Why do you need this ability?

To implement a prepaid system

I would appreciate having an objective recommendations from you

8

Good. When doing this with Home Assistant, I’d install a server somewhere in the area running Home Assistant. This server has to be in the same network as the WiFi network of the area. Then connect all sonoff switches to this server over the WiFi connection. Afterwards enable remote access to this server.

9

In many countries there are laws preventing this.
As I said you’d need something more resilient than a Sonoff or people will just bypass it. How will you measure their usage to decide if they have used up what they have paid for.

10

The issue is with sonoff limits as I mentioned before it’ll be okay to use it with 70% of our clients as their consumption does not exceed 3500w/h. with the rest the usage will burn sonoff. any walkaround or other ideas can you come up with to implement a universal solution?

11

A contactor like I said 4000 posts ago.
https://www.electricaldirect.co.uk/product/bg-40a-230v-double-pole-contactor-607810?vat=1&pr=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiAv6yCBhCLARIsABqJTjZqcUBH60-F0-oiNyAI6wqmOM7HyOd6lgn94zihPqYnOK13YmBtlPwaAqFoEALw_wcB
You switch that with the sonoff

12

I agree, but it’ll cost too much as we are considering to apply the solution to over 20K clients in next phase.

Anything else could come to your mind as a creative and safe solution for such case?

13

Maybe cheaper to send people to switch it off for you then :thinking:

14

Just to clarify, 30 dollars per client is too expensive? What’s the budget per client?

15

It more about efficiency + keeping a balance in costs, not about being cheap.

16

Taking into considerations many factors, yes it’s expensive.

15$ per client would be acceptable.

17

Good luck then. I don’t think there’s anything cheaper than the SonOffs, and definitely not for the 30% users with more than 3500W.

18

How is the distribution arranged.?
If each house is fed directly from a substation you could house the switches there.
One WiFi device could control many contactors.
If the houses are looped to eachother this wouldn’t work.

19

Please don’t answer this question. This should be addressed by an engineering firm who understands what is required for this level of implementation. Frankly, I am concerned that a ‘grid’ operator is asking questions like this on a home automation forum.

The fact that no one asked a bunch of key questions before providing options shows that this question shouldn’t have been answered by that person. This is much different than switching your lights on and off.

Applying household devices to a grid level situation is a good way to burn down a bunch of houses.

20

To be fair we did say it wasn’t a good idea.
Also I’m expecting there to be less of a grid and more extension leads cable ties along fences ,:joy: