Dear all,
Looking to monitor multiple energy consumption at my house, I am looking for a set-up enabling to follow at least 9 "lines" of power and consumption, corresponding to 3 categories of devices (total installation + electric heating + water heating) on a 3-phases installation.
I am not a developper, athough a have some past knowledge of computer-science and some limited electronics. I can do some soldering, and minor configuration adaptation, but this is more of less my limits (for now !).
Sensor side : Would it make sense to buy three emonTx kits (=3x3 CT inputs) or is there a way to reduce de sensor hardware by "stacking-up" sensor "extensions" (if they exist) to a single emonTx ? or add multiple emonTx shield to a single Arduino board ?
Base side : would I need a single emonBase, or more than one, to gather all these inputs ?
A bit more general question : what is the refresh rate of the power measures, and is it sufficient for load-controlling (pushing the information quickly enough to another system like home automation so that it can decide if there is an overload and switch off some appliances on a given phase) ?
Thanks for your help on my feasability assessment of my solution !
Best regards.
Re: Simple set-up for 9-CT monitoring
Take a look at this http://openenergymonitor.org/emon/node/1170 to start with. You should need only one base (unless some transmitters are out of range), and the update rate is set in software, normally 5 seconds but it could be changed (subject to limitations regarding occupancy of the radio channel).