Real time electricity usage monitor

[SUNRAY]

and proves what I have said that a CT alone is not fit for purpose.

In this instance yes but your continued postulation is only correct under specific conditions.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

Your existing electricity meter.

Clamp on units are not fit for purpose as they don't take account of voltage variations or phase angle.

Groan..

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

Without mentioning smart meters, can anyone recommend a real time usage monitor for electricity?

I know you said not to mention, but - they accurately and continually show what you are using and when. For plug in loads, and for around £10, you can buy a plug in gadget which can log how much an individual appliance like a fridge, freezer uses, Kwh, or cost over a day, week, or month etc.. Which take account of both voltage and PF.

If you need an accurate total v time, without a Smart, you can get devices which log the flash of the meters LED, if you have one of that type of meter.

 

[JohnD]

I use Owl monitors. I pick them up on ebay. They have a wireless sender clamped over your meter tail, and portable wireless display you can carry around

My favourire display has a USB connector on the side and I leave it plugged to my PC. Other models lack this socket. it stores data on the
PC which can graph usage per minute/hour/day/month/year

You can have an infinite number of receivers on one sender, if you so desire.

 

[winston1]

I use Owl monitors. I pick them up on ebay. They have a wireless sender clamped over your meter tail, and portable wireless display you can carry around

My favourire display has a USB connector on the side and I leave it plugged to my PC. Other models lack this socket.

You can have an infinite number of receivers on one sender, if you so desire.

Once again current transformers not fit for purpose as they neither monitor voltage nor power factor.

 

[SUNRAY]

Once again current transformers not fit for purpose as they neither monitor voltage nor power factor.

Please Please Please stop saying current transformers are not fit for purpose.

Once again you are very very very wrong.

A bit of education for you silly winny; current transformers serve a very useful job, they do exactly what they are designed to do and there are millions of them in regular service accurrately transforming the current in the wire under test to a signal suitable for the device it is designed to work with.

However the current transformer cannot be blamed for inaccurate devices that follow it.

If you must keep criticising something then at least criticise the correct device.

 

[Why Not Indeed]

To try and see what energy is used at specific times, whether there is a certain peak load to see if solar panels are viable.

If you want to get more involved...
Shelly EM has good integration with Home Assistant, and EmonCMS [an energy monitoring platform].
If you want to monitor >2 circuits then you will need multiple of them. You might consider an emonTX v4 that can take 6x CTs, but we're getting well in to 3 figures here.

 

[JohnD]

Without mentioning smart meters, can anyone recommend a real time usage monitor for electricity? Easy to use/install (clamp on?) and preferably cheap. Thanks.

An Owl or similar. some years ago, electricity suppliers used to provide monitors to their customers, and many of them, unused and BNIB, crop up on ebay.

I strongly prefer one that can attach to your PC from graphing and reports. I'm using a CM160.

no doubt there are more modern models.