How to long until we hit 1.21 gigawatts?

September 18, 2009 8:03 AM

How can we present instantaneous stats on our energy consumption and generation in a site with a windmill and possibly other forms of energy generation?

We have a number of sites where we're going to install windmills, solar, and other green bits. We'd like to have the meters attached to these sites continuously report how much energy they are drawing from the grid, putting on the grid, and how much is being generated by each device.

We were using a meter that I'll choose not to slander here. According to spec, we should be able to get this data, but we found its serial modbus connection to be lacking. Ideally, the equipment on site would be internet connected and not rely on a server at the site, but relay data to a central server under our control.

posted by advicepig to Science & Nature (3 answers total)

I have a WEL connected to my ground source heat pump. It's pretty easy to install and there are a variety of sensors that work with it. So far I've only gotten around to installing some temperature sensors on the in/out ground loop and the hot water tank, but there are options for all kinds of other sensors. For example, you can connect a Wattnode on it to measure current usage.

It can be used for solar and wind, or just about anything that can be monitored.

You can keep it really simple or make it as complex as you want it. You can view people's systems on that site (including mine, but it's amazingly boring, especially now that we're not using heating or A/C, so I'm not going to link to it) to get an idea of how people are using it.

I can monitor my system from anywhere I can get to a web browser. It's fun to see how well the system is performing on really cold days, and to watch the loop temperature get lower throughout the winter.

The Welserver site has a forum where you can ask questions about this sort of stuff.
posted by bondcliff at 8:28 AM on September 18, 2009

Response by poster: Well, we got a meter from Energy Tracking and we'll start testing soon. One nice feature is that it can push data out in SOAP requests so we don't have to get all of our sites on static ips or using a dynamic dns solution.
posted by advicepig at 11:41 AM on September 24, 2009

Response by poster: Well, we are changing meters again and are going to demo the TED 5000. It's got more features and costs a lot less. It also works with Google PowerMeter!
posted by advicepig at 7:03 PM on October 12, 2009