Has anyone hacked the Black and Decker power monior?

BlueLine Innovations offered a wireless receiver that plugs into your computer. Sounds like what you want, but it wasn't cheap. I believe the B&D is just a rebadged Blueline.

Microsoft Hohm offered some areas the ability to get that data directly from the utility, but that seems to have just failed.

Seems like there was a hack to put bluetooth..or maybe it was zigbee into a KillAWatt. I can't find the link. Again, complex and expensive.

I found the link on the Blueline

Never found the follow-on article where they made it useful.

I solved my air conditioner problem with a flapper sitting on a duct vent with the switch hooked into the serial port of a PDA. Could do the same thing with a relay or optoisolator hooked to the hot tub.

If you have an electronic utility meter, you can use the IR port on a Palm PDA to log power consumption. Pretty easy to see the big spikes from the air conditioner, water heater etc. I never tried to publish the code 'cause nobody seemed the slightest bit interested.

I experienced the same problem outlined in the linked article. Was fun to watch it for a few days...now what? I'm bored with it. I've already taken what steps I could to reduce consumption. Now what? I've got the Blueline monitor. Cost me $1.76 to wash clothes this month...now what??? Air conditioner has run 37 minutes out of the last 3466 minutes... now what??? Shower last night cost me 15-cents...now what???

It's easy to OVERTHINK continuous monitoring of energy consumption. An electric clock in parallel with your hot tub heater will give you all the duty cycle info you need. And unless you're gonna grab the knob and change the temperature, you've learned nothing useful.

I think I'm spending more on batteries for all this stuff than I'm saving in electricity.

If you snag any interface info, publish the link. I'm up for building more useless stuff... Thanks, mike

Link at

Depending on how well equipped one's parts drawer is, cost ranges from nothing to not very much. Kits are available or click around the page for instructions and schematics.

--
Rich Webb     Norfolk, VA

it becomes MUCH more interesting if your utility offers a more sophisticated billing plan such as time of day or peak usage discounts...

Mark

Not really. Knowing in great detail has no utility, pun intended, unless you plan to do something about the times you use electricity. If your electricity is cheaper at 2AM, doing the laundry at 2AM can save you money. But you don't need to monitor it, you just pushed the switch to turn it on, you KNOW what time it is. And it uses the same number of kilowatts as if you'd pushed the switch at noon.

Don't confuse real-time monitoring with real-time energy management. Once you learn the energy use characteristics of stuff, you don't often need to measure consumption in real time. Knowing the ON-time for my air conditioner is just about as good as knowing real-time energy consumption.

Here's something that surprised me... Here in Oregon, it usually gets cool enough at night to run a fan and cool down the house at night. Most days, the inside never gets too hot to run the air conditioner. But the internal temperature keeps rising well into the evening. Something to do with the thermal time constant of the insulation in the attic.

The big fan uses about 10% of the energy of the air conditioner. So, if the air runs 10% of the time, it's just as economical to run the air conditioner all night as to run the big fan. And you don't let the inside get damp so the air conditioner has to remove the latent heat next day.

Knowing the temperature profiles from the weather forecast, I can decide whether to open up the house and run the fan or keep it closed and the air on. Real-time consumption data is of no additional use to me.

The KillAWatt has its uses. Real-time data collection is still mostly irrelevant. How much power is my computer using at this instant? I'm using it, so I don't care! or I'm not using it so it's turned OFF! Real-time monitoring is not useful to me.

Also, the KAW can't measure the biggest users of electricity. Water heater, Central Air, Oven, Clothes Dryer, Anything 220V Anything without a plug. My Microwave causes it to do whatever flashing it does when it's overloaded.

Just thought of one useful instance of real-time monitoring. I could tell if I forgot to turn off the 540W of incandescent lights in the attic. Replaced them all with CFL. Now, I can't usually tell whether they're on from the total consumption. I feel better...even though there's no way the investment in CFL for the attic will ever pay back in energy savings. Fortunately, I had all these crappy lights that took a second to start up. Attic was a good place to stick 'em.

Real-time energy monitoring is no substitute for common sense. If you ain't usin' it, turn it off! If you're not cold, turn down the heat until you are and put on a sweater.

Wanna have some fun??? Go tell the significant other to turn off her vibrator and wait till 2AM when the rates go down.

Yes, not until i can get the phase info as well.

Nope, run on gas.

Gas heating only. Only use a few days per year.

Pool pump (16A). Washer (10A), Vacuum (8A). I run my 50A generator (on NG) for them. Most of the time, i have 16A to 34A left over to pump back into the grid, if and when my power injector is ready. I need to track the exact power phase to do so.

That's just power (

If you want to save energy pitch in and help, so she can get done quicker! Of course you can do that after 2am too. Mikek

ar

Any idea for a grid synchronizer? Not really an inverter. I need something to throttle the gas line to synch the power phase.

generator

be far

That gets into some squirrelly issues. What kind of generator is it anyway, induction / synchronous (field / PM)? How is engine speed regulated now? How do you manage disconnect if grid power disappears?

?-)