How is Real Time Monitoring of Electricity Use Useful for HA

[matapan]

Can someone tell me how a Brultech meter is useful in a home automation setup?

 

In researching the uses for a Brultech meter, I can kind of see the use for it - checking out how much electricity is being used by specific appliances, checking out power quality, like the voltage in real time.

 

Frankly, I don't see the uses for real time monitoring when hooked up to an ISY. The add-on kind suddenly appeared as an option, but no info on what the common uses would be for it. I'm sure I'm missing something here - there was a lot of effort expended in developing this module. Could someone share what uses and programs they've written to exploit this module and the Brultech meter? Thanks!

[fitzpatri8]

Some utilities now offer rate plans that charge different rates at different times of day or offer alerts during peak power periods if loads are anticipated to be or coming perilously close to max capacity and threatening brownouts. For customers in those areas, a home automation system might be able to watch for large loads turning on (AC, dishwasher, clothes washer/dryer, power equipment, etc.) during peak demand times and modify settings (bump the AC temp up a few degrees?), time-shift the load (turn it off until off-peak hours) or notify you of the conflict so you can make an informed decision.

 

You could also use excessive or extended demand to trigger notifications so that you would find out early if a refrigerator/freezer/pool/hot tub/range/oven malfunctioned and remained on continuously, or if the kids were having a wild party with all the lights on while you were away on vacation.

[matapan]

Thanks for responding to my post. I have a couple of questions based on reading your reply:

 

- Is it pretty straightforward to turn on devices like Washers and Dryers at a preset time? Is this done through Insteon, or through some microprocessor built into these devices?

 

- If it's hot outside, and the AC is on, wouldn't one use it, regardless of the cost of electricity? In other words, when you're hot, you're hot, no?

 

- Have users actually written programs running in ISY to check if a device load is continuous? (i.e., the appliance is broken because it doesn't cycle?) Does it work?

 

Regards,

John

[fitzpatri8]

Thanks for responding to my post. I have a couple of questions based on reading your reply:

 

- Is it pretty straightforward to turn on devices like Washers and Dryers at a preset time? Is this done through Insteon, or through some microprocessor built into these devices?

 

- If it's hot outside, and the AC is on, wouldn't one use it, regardless of the cost of electricity? In other words, when you're hot, you're hot, no?

 

- Have users actually written programs running in ISY to check if a device load is continuous? (i.e., the appliance is broken because it doesn't cycle?) Does it work?

 

Regards,

John

 

Turning on a washing machine at a preset time can be easy or can be difficult, depending on the device's design. Devices with electromechanical controls could be shut down after the current load finished and left unpowered until off-peak hours. In that case, you could load and set the device to run as soon as power was restored by an ApplianceLinc and your ISY.

 

For the current generation of electronic control laundry appliances, you'd use ISY notifications to alert you rather than control the appliance itself, since you wouldn't want to power cycle the electronics and lose device settings. As the 'smart grid' technology becomes more prevalent, you'll see appliance manufacturers start to incorporate ways for your utility and your automation gear to talk to them, either through a web or IR interface.

 

If it's really hot outside, the last thing you want is to cause a power outage. The 'Smart Grid' approach is to suggest that, if power levels become critical, wouldn't it be better for you and all your neighbors to be two or three degrees warmer and avoid a brownout or a blackout vs. being perfectly comfortable until the hottest part of the day then losing AC altogether? The Smart Grid is about having houses and neighbors (residential and businesses alike) working together as a team to avoid both inefficiencies and costly outages, and the new smart time-of-use electric meters also reward your cooperation with cheaper off-peak electricity rates.

 

ISY 'programs' aren't programs in the classic sense of the word--you don't sit down in front of an empty page having to pull in libraries and pull keywords out of your head and code from scratch. Rather, in ISY terms a 'program' is a screen where you select your choice of 'trigger events' and logical 'Then' and 'Else' actions. Monitoring how long a device has been pulling power is as easy as making two programs--one that triggers when power exceeds x or goes below y watts, and another that triggers so many hours or minutes since the first program last ran and sends out a notification. You could probably search the forum here for examples of people using Brueltech input and 'last run' as a program triggers.

 

Smart Grid technology is still young and evolving and provides something of a chicken-and-egg dilemma. I'm happy to see Universal Devices offering choices both in energy use monitoring (Brueltech and SmartLabs new iMeter Solo and SynchroLinc) and electric grid demand monitoring (Flex Your Power and Auto Demand Response), and I look forward to seeing major appliance and HVAC controls incorporating greater support. It'll be interesting to see how the Smart Grid evolves, and to see if other alerts (like the request to reduce demand because of smog alerts, or impending weather emergencies) are eventually wrapped into the same system.

[Brian H]

I see that Smartlabs is getting Insteon integrated with SmartGrid also.

http://www.insteonsmartgrid.com/