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Hello everyone,

I would like to monitor the power that we are consuming in our house. Is there any energy meter available that can be used and has a driver for Control4 which will allow me to see the energy consumption on the touchscreen?

Any help would be appreciated.

Best Regards,

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8 minutes ago, alanchow said:

We are working on a new solution with a partner currently which will offer zigbee based ct clamps with demand response and T3 user interface.

this will be due out in the next few months.

That's great. I will be waiting

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It would be really nice if  you could get better information from your utility on consumption.  There was an initiative called The Green Button but in most places I don't know that is really taking off.  Of course the best solution would be a smart meter that connects to your LAN or the cloud from which you can get data.  I can get real-time production data from my solar power inverter, just not decent consumption data.

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Just now, Control-IT said:

I just pay my bill when it comes 

yep, but it's hard for me to blame my wife for leaving shit on when i do that :P 

on a serious note, though, do you think that understanding how much energy things use (dryer, aircon, etc.) will alter actions towards saving energy? if not that's cool, but this is what a friend asked me to get me started on it. 

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We rolled out a trial using Control4 and our energy product for a utility in New Zealand.  Worked pretty well.  Did alot of automated load shedding on high import and also turned on specific loads when high export was generated.

What we are creating is a more generic version of that which can be used by anyone and can be retrofit as well.

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28 minutes ago, Christopher Spitler said:

on a serious note, though, do you think that understanding how much energy things use (dryer, aircon, etc.) will alter actions towards saving energy? if not that's cool, but this is what a friend asked me to get me started on it. 

I think it would, especially if you can see a direct link between your actions and energy consumption/ billing.

By the way HA doesn't really help this.  Having devices in network standby mode can sometimes substantially increase the power usage - by 26W in the case of my Sharp TV.  And having dozens of C4 lights/dimmers/keypads in your house has to cause more consumption than dumb old switches that burn 0mW when not on.

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Just now, zaphod said:

I think it would, especially if you can see a direct link between your actions and energy consumption/ billing.

By the way HA doesn't really help this.  Having devices in network standby mode can sometimes substantially increase the power usage - by 26W in the case of my Sharp TV.  And having dozens of C4 lights/dimmers/keypads in your house has to cause more consumption than dumb old switches that burn 0mW when not on.

i converted all of my bulbs in the house to LED when I moved in, so I think i'm net negative on the energy usage (I hope?). But agreed that smart devices need power, too. 

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Just now, alanchow said:

Actually we found that shifting energy usage from peaks to troughs help quite a bit for dual rate energy billing and also demand response on PV to also assist quite substantially.

so you're developing a driver to work with a multitude of energy monitors? or just stating what you've done in NZ?

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6 minutes ago, alanchow said:

Actually we found that shifting energy usage from peaks to troughs help quite a bit for dual rate energy billing and also demand response on PV to also assist quite substantially.

I think this could be particularly useful in helping to shave peak demand, especially if you can have more dynamic pricing and more automation in shutting things off when peak pricing is spiking, kind of like how many utilities give you a break on pricing if you install a device that turns off your A/C when demand spikes.

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6 minutes ago, Christopher Spitler said:

so you're developing a driver to work with a multitude of energy monitors? or just stating what you've done in NZ?

We have partnered up with an Australia based company to modify their zigbee power meter to be compatible with Control4's Zigbee mesh.  We are going to be concentrating on this meter as it provides the perfect solution for Control4 in terms of ease of use and installation.

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Do they make "smart" house electrical meters that you could hook up to your LAN?  As I mentioned above my PV solar inverter connects to my LAN and has an open API that makes it very easy to read data.  Why shouldn't my electrical meter from Toronto Hydro-Electric (my local electrical utility) provide the same info?

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Just now, zaphod said:

Do they make "smart" house electrical meters that you could hook up to your LAN?  As I mentioned above my PV solar inverter connects to my LAN and has an open API that makes it very easy to read data.  Why shouldn't my electrical meter from Toronto Hydro-Electric (my local electrical utility) provide the same info?

yes and no. since most residential meters are owned and managed by the utility, they are going to install what they want (and what works for their system). on the commercial/industrial side you can install your own, kinda. that being said, you can get a meter yourself and use it as a "sub-meter" , but at that point, you're back to energy monitoring anyway with a much cheaper installation. with a sub-meter, you generally need to add in a new service disconnect and/or panel. but it all depends on your install and utility provider. 

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It would be nice if going forward all meters had to be smart and have an open API to provide this data to consumers so that consumers could then take action.  With just a few minutes searching on Google it appears that there are a few things out there including Sense and a Kickstarter project called Glow.  There is the aforementioned Green Button Data initiative as well.

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31 minutes ago, Christopher Spitler said:

what meter is it, if i may ask? i wanted to work on a project to use attach to the optical reader on an I-210+ and broadcast it using zigbee to the mesh, but yeah, i don't really have time for that :(:(

We are working with Saturn South to provide this solution.  We have used their solutions over the past few years and are extremely happy with it.  The solution we are developing is scalable as well which means you can monitor anywhere from a single circuit upto whatever you want.  Three phase compatible product available as well.

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4 hours ago, alanchow said:

We are working with Saturn South to provide this solution.  We have used their solutions over the past few years and are extremely happy with it.  The solution we are developing is scalable as well which means you can monitor anywhere from a single circuit upto whatever you want.  Three phase compatible product available as well.

Cant wait for this alan, i have a site with 3 phase in & a wind generation plant this would be perfect 👍🏻

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13 minutes ago, carl01 said:

Cant wait for this alan, i have a site with 3 phase in & a wind generation plant this would be perfect 👍🏻

Yeah we went out of our way to pay for CE on the device since the UK is such a big market for us.

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  • 3 months later...
On 1/23/2018 at 6:12 AM, alanchow said:

Yeah we went out of our way to pay for CE on the device since the UK is such a big market for us.

Is there any update on the availability of this product?

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On 1/22/2018 at 8:09 PM, alanchow said:

We are working with Saturn South to provide this solution.  We have used their solutions over the past few years and are extremely happy with it.  The solution we are developing is scalable as well which means you can monitor anywhere from a single circuit upto whatever you want.  Three phase compatible product available as well.

How do we buy the Saturn South hardware in the UK? Is the SS9005 the right hardware for three phase or is there a new version being developed? We are building a new house (with a three phase supply) and it would be great to incorporate the right product from the outset. Thanks!

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