We've seen it, and you don't need the quote marks - it really IS a fuse box
Most people, call them 'consumer units', these days!
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Am I allowed to drill a hole through the back of the DNO meter cabinet and fit a CT clamp? Should I?
- Thread starter chazzyB
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Most people, call them 'consumer units', these days!
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Make a hole in the inner leaf of the cavity below the meter box, feed your power cable through that and then bring it up through one of the holes in the bottom, connect your Shelley. This really is risky though, because there are at least three cables in that cavity which you don't want to hit.
I think you probably need to leave the Shelley in a box on the shelf if you're not going to get an electrician involved.
I think you probably need to leave the Shelley in a box on the shelf if you're not going to get an electrician involved.
True, although (as we often see here) a good few call (modernish) consuner units "fuse boxes", too
As far as I am concerned, "Fuse box" seems a very reasonable term to use to refer to a box containing fuses
Yes, might turn out to be an expensive or useless freebie.
I did look for battery powered clamps but only found some sketchy information about a chameleon CT-clamp
Got a link for this Owl device? I'm surprised there aren't more wireless/battery CT-clamps..
I'm not against getting an electrician involved, but I am not able to find one willing to get involved. I'll ring around tomorrow. I just can't afford the time or expense for a major rewire, especially this time of year.
I'm not keen on drilling below the meter box because that's obviously where the incoming supply and fusebox tails run and the concrete lintel visible at the bottom of the picture is the Gas supply and meter cabinet.
A simple solution, would be to request, and have installed a smart meter. That will report to an In Home Display, your consumption accurately, and will cost you no installation costs, or even a replacement 'fusebox'.
They already have a smart meter.
A 35 year old house isn't likely to need a rewire.
That fusebox should be replaced, and given it's only four circuits it would be done in a day.
What exactly do you want this thing for?
If you want to see energy use in real time, just get one of these: https://octopus.energy/blog/octopus-home-mini/
OK
Good question.
Maybe the OP is not on Octopus, but if he were - he could watch his instant consumption to his hearts content. Get the right app, and it will even log it for him..
Photo of the meter has 'Octopus E' on the display.
A current transformer measures current, as the name suggests. In order to determine power you also need to measure the voltage. This is why a power meter needs the mains connection. Once you have the mains connection for measuring, you might as well also use it to power the meter. That’s why you don’t get battery-powered mains power meters.
(You can measure only the current and assume that the voltage is always 240V and in-phase with the current. You can do that with a clamp meter That may be good enough for some purposes, but not for billing.)
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Other than perhaps in some relatively new houses (with situations like yours), the meter tails are usually very accessible, so there is rarely a need for a non-cabled connection to the CT clamp.
One thing - as endecotp has pointed out, any monitor which only uses only a clip on CT will not give you totally accurate energy data, because it has to guess (or be told) what the voltage is, and has to assume that that voltage never changes (but it does). So, as has been said, accurate enough to give a pretty good estimate of energy consumption (if that interests you), but not accurate enough for, say, checking billing.
Having said that, there's no reason why a monitoring system can't get information about voltage (by being 'plugged in') to supplement the current data from a CT clamp - in which case accurate energy consumption figures should be possible.
I have the home-mini, but it's not realtime in that the data is collected from the meter and uploaded to octopus and then made available to the API and not available for 1-2 minutes depending on api rate limits (100 requests per hour)
I want energy import and export in realtime. The shelly is part of a DIY plug-in Solar setup. With this, I can automatically maximise self-consumption/storage and minimise unpaid export.
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