Open-source tools for energy monitoring and visualisation
Updated: 1 week 1 day ago
One Year of Solar PV Monitoring
On the 23rd November 2011 we have had a 2.9Kwp solar PV installed.
We recently got our first payment from the UK's governments Feed In Tariff scheme. This has prompted me to take stock of how the system has been performing and how the data collected using the OpenEnergyMonitor energy monitoring system compares to the utility company's billing meter:
From the 23rd Nov 2011 - 23rd Nov 2012 the billing utility meter on the solar PV system has recorded a generation of 2069 kWh. Over the same period we consumed 3588 Kwh, 57% of our electrical energy needs have been met by the solar PV.
At this rate it looks like we're on track for the system to pay back in 7-8 years, maybe even less if we have some more sun in the next few years, fingers crossed!
For the same time period the OpenEnergyMonitor monitoring system has recorded a generation of 2029 kWh, giving the energy monitor an accuracy of 98%!
The monitoring system is a standard emonTx with an AC-AC adapter taking Real Power readings.
One Year of PV GenerationKwh/d Electricity Consumption (orange) Overlaid with Generation (blue)
When the system was installed the solar PV company estimated we would produce 2434 Kwh per year, we generated 15% less than this estimate. This could partly be attributed to the very poor summer we experienced in 2012.
This year is already looking promising, on the 2nd of May 2013 our system generated a record (for us) of 18.3 Kwh 1.9 times more than we consumed on that day (9.7 Kwh):
Record Generation on 2nd May 2013Fingers crossed for a sunny 2013 summer!
We recently got our first payment from the UK's governments Feed In Tariff scheme. This has prompted me to take stock of how the system has been performing and how the data collected using the OpenEnergyMonitor energy monitoring system compares to the utility company's billing meter:
From the 23rd Nov 2011 - 23rd Nov 2012 the billing utility meter on the solar PV system has recorded a generation of 2069 kWh. Over the same period we consumed 3588 Kwh, 57% of our electrical energy needs have been met by the solar PV.
At this rate it looks like we're on track for the system to pay back in 7-8 years, maybe even less if we have some more sun in the next few years, fingers crossed!
For the same time period the OpenEnergyMonitor monitoring system has recorded a generation of 2029 kWh, giving the energy monitor an accuracy of 98%!
The monitoring system is a standard emonTx with an AC-AC adapter taking Real Power readings.
One Year of PV GenerationKwh/d Electricity Consumption (orange) Overlaid with Generation (blue)
When the system was installed the solar PV company estimated we would produce 2434 Kwh per year, we generated 15% less than this estimate. This could partly be attributed to the very poor summer we experienced in 2012.
This year is already looking promising, on the 2nd of May 2013 our system generated a record (for us) of 18.3 Kwh 1.9 times more than we consumed on that day (9.7 Kwh):
Record Generation on 2nd May 2013Fingers crossed for a sunny 2013 summer!
Categories: Blog
Carbon Coop
The weekend before last I went to Manchester to help Matt Fawcett and Jonathan Atkinson of Carbon coop with the EcoHome_Lab openenergymonitor energy monitor building workshop. I haven’t blogged about Carbon Co-op before so Id like to give a bit of an intro to who they are and why I think what they are doing is particularly exiting.
http://carbon.coopI first met Matt who is responsible for the monitoring at Carbon Coop at a Cleanwebuk event in London after initially exchanging a few emails. Matt explained that they are working on a retrofit programme to try to prove that it is possible to cut between 60-80% of energy demand from homes because this is what we need to save.
They want monitoring to be at the centre of everything they do, so that their members can see how minor changes impact energy usage as well as more major retrofit changes. They also want to monitor internal air quality as well as temperature for early identification of any problems with the insulation and airtightness measures. By monitoring humidity, CO2 as well as temperature Matt explained that its possible to isolate issues around damp/cooking etc from issues around ventilation.
They are really keen to use open source technology because that then gives them the freedom to configure the system as they need and then get at the data. They are keen advocates for open data and open source software and hardware in general and carry out their own work in an open way.
Since then Carbon Coop have installed 18 openenergymonitor energy monitors in houses across Manchester, held two energy monitor workshops including last weekends and are going forward with retrofitting 15 houses to between 60 and 80% carbon reduction.
Building monitors at the Carbon Coop EcoHomeLab workshop 19th-20th April What I really like about Carbon Coop is the way they are working on every part of the process: They start with the larger picture of what we need to do in terms of sustainable energy in housing and then go from there to work on an individual household basis, first carrying out a detailed whole house assessment based on the governments SAP (standard assessment procedure) to identify where most energy is being lost, which improvements would have the biggest effect and what to do first. They’re using the energy monitoring to provide feedback to households as described above. From there they go on to help households carry out work on their houses, from finding the best way to finance retrofit measures to working with architects and local tradespeople. Once the retrofit building works are complete they continue to monitor to ensure that the changes reach the predicted energy targets. They do all this using an open source approach, they are also a co-operative that is open for people to join. They are a really switched on group of people, carrying out their work in a thorough, thoughtful, evidence based way.
Every-time I go to visit them I come back inspired to develop things further. One of the highlights of the last visit was listening to Eleni Kalkantzi who works for URBED (Carbon Coop's technical partner) talk about the whole house assessment methodology and reports she, Charlie Baker and Marianne Heaslip have developed. A huge amount of work has clearly gone into these reports and the assessment method, they have an example report and report on the assessment method here:
See their example assessment here: http://carbon.coop/assessments/CC_EXAMPLE_ASSESSMENT2.pdf
Report on the assessment method: http://carbon.coop/assessments/URBED_ASSESSMENT_REPORT.pdf
They see the next step being to integrate monitoring data directly in to the SAP model on which their reporting is based to reduce the number of assumptions made. This is where the open source emoncms SAP model that we have been developing comes in but I will come back to that in another post.
http://carbon.coopI first met Matt who is responsible for the monitoring at Carbon Coop at a Cleanwebuk event in London after initially exchanging a few emails. Matt explained that they are working on a retrofit programme to try to prove that it is possible to cut between 60-80% of energy demand from homes because this is what we need to save.
They want monitoring to be at the centre of everything they do, so that their members can see how minor changes impact energy usage as well as more major retrofit changes. They also want to monitor internal air quality as well as temperature for early identification of any problems with the insulation and airtightness measures. By monitoring humidity, CO2 as well as temperature Matt explained that its possible to isolate issues around damp/cooking etc from issues around ventilation.
They are really keen to use open source technology because that then gives them the freedom to configure the system as they need and then get at the data. They are keen advocates for open data and open source software and hardware in general and carry out their own work in an open way.
Since then Carbon Coop have installed 18 openenergymonitor energy monitors in houses across Manchester, held two energy monitor workshops including last weekends and are going forward with retrofitting 15 houses to between 60 and 80% carbon reduction.
Building monitors at the Carbon Coop EcoHomeLab workshop 19th-20th April What I really like about Carbon Coop is the way they are working on every part of the process: They start with the larger picture of what we need to do in terms of sustainable energy in housing and then go from there to work on an individual household basis, first carrying out a detailed whole house assessment based on the governments SAP (standard assessment procedure) to identify where most energy is being lost, which improvements would have the biggest effect and what to do first. They’re using the energy monitoring to provide feedback to households as described above. From there they go on to help households carry out work on their houses, from finding the best way to finance retrofit measures to working with architects and local tradespeople. Once the retrofit building works are complete they continue to monitor to ensure that the changes reach the predicted energy targets. They do all this using an open source approach, they are also a co-operative that is open for people to join. They are a really switched on group of people, carrying out their work in a thorough, thoughtful, evidence based way.
Every-time I go to visit them I come back inspired to develop things further. One of the highlights of the last visit was listening to Eleni Kalkantzi who works for URBED (Carbon Coop's technical partner) talk about the whole house assessment methodology and reports she, Charlie Baker and Marianne Heaslip have developed. A huge amount of work has clearly gone into these reports and the assessment method, they have an example report and report on the assessment method here:
See their example assessment here: http://carbon.coop/assessments/CC_EXAMPLE_ASSESSMENT2.pdf
Report on the assessment method: http://carbon.coop/assessments/URBED_ASSESSMENT_REPORT.pdf
They see the next step being to integrate monitoring data directly in to the SAP model on which their reporting is based to reduce the number of assumptions made. This is where the open source emoncms SAP model that we have been developing comes in but I will come back to that in another post.
Categories: Blog
Introducing the RFM12Pi V2 - Raspberry Pi Wireless Expansion Board
Since, November last year we have more and more been leaning towards using a Raspberry Pi as our web connected base station of choice. See here for our original blog post on using the Raspberry Pi as an emoncms logging and visualisation server.
Here is the latest version of the RFM12Pi Raspberry Pi wireless expansion board. Like the V1 the RFM12Pi V2 allows the Raspberry Pi to receive and transmit data via RFM12B 433/868mhz from and to other wireless nodes such as the emonTx, emonGLCD and Remote Temperature nodes.
RFM12Pi V2 - Raspberry Pi Expansion Board
The RFM12Pi V2 is now for sale in the OpenEnergyMonitor online shop, it comes pre-assembled and ready loaded with firmware, when used in conjunction with the read-to-go emoncms Raspberry Pi SD card image it makes for a truly plug-and-play energy monitor web-connected base-station setup. We're also selling a PCB only version and of course the hardware design, Arduino based firmware all Raspberry Pi emoncms setup is all open-source.
For the ultimate super-quick and easy setup we have also made available pre-loaded Emoncms Raspberry Pi SD cards. Emoncms Raspberry Pi Pre-loaded SD card
The new features of the RFM12Pi V2 are:
To get up and running all that's needed is to connect the RFM12Pi onto the Raspberry Pi's GPIO pins, insert the pre-build SD card and bootup the Pi. Once booted up browse to the Pi's local IP address or the host name (http://emoncmspi) and then configure the RFM12B network setting from within emoncms.
emoncms Raspberry Pi Module Config Page
Monitoring data is logged to the Raspberry Pi's SD card and can be mirrored to emoncms.org or any other emoncms server for backup and remote viewing. The Raspberry Pi is powerful enough to be able to serve emoncms graphs and widgets.
emoncms dashboard served from the Raspberry Pi - viewed on a Nexus 7 Tablet
Here is the latest version of the RFM12Pi Raspberry Pi wireless expansion board. Like the V1 the RFM12Pi V2 allows the Raspberry Pi to receive and transmit data via RFM12B 433/868mhz from and to other wireless nodes such as the emonTx, emonGLCD and Remote Temperature nodes.
RFM12Pi V2 - Raspberry Pi Expansion Board
The RFM12Pi V2 is now for sale in the OpenEnergyMonitor online shop, it comes pre-assembled and ready loaded with firmware, when used in conjunction with the read-to-go emoncms Raspberry Pi SD card image it makes for a truly plug-and-play energy monitor web-connected base-station setup. We're also selling a PCB only version and of course the hardware design, Arduino based firmware all Raspberry Pi emoncms setup is all open-source.
For the ultimate super-quick and easy setup we have also made available pre-loaded Emoncms Raspberry Pi SD cards. Emoncms Raspberry Pi Pre-loaded SD card
The new features of the RFM12Pi V2 are:
- ATmega328 based, has more memory and hardware serial support
- Using the ATmega328 hardware serial (+optiboot) and AVRdude (pre-installed on SD card image) it's possible to upgrade the firmware on the RFM12Pi V2 direct from Raspberry Pi, instructions are on the wiki.
- Runs on ATmega328 internal 8Mhz oscillator (to save unnecessary components)
- SMT used, board layout is optimised for pick-and-place assembly
- Lower profile to fit inside most Raspberry Pi enclosures
To get up and running all that's needed is to connect the RFM12Pi onto the Raspberry Pi's GPIO pins, insert the pre-build SD card and bootup the Pi. Once booted up browse to the Pi's local IP address or the host name (http://emoncmspi) and then configure the RFM12B network setting from within emoncms.
emoncms Raspberry Pi Module Config Page
Monitoring data is logged to the Raspberry Pi's SD card and can be mirrored to emoncms.org or any other emoncms server for backup and remote viewing. The Raspberry Pi is powerful enough to be able to serve emoncms graphs and widgets.
emoncms dashboard served from the Raspberry Pi - viewed on a Nexus 7 Tablet
Categories: Blog
Pictures from the OpenEnergyMonitor CAT course
A couple of weeks ago we held our first openenergymonitor course at the Center for Alternative Technology in Mid Wales. It was well attended with 17 of us in total including tutors: myself, Carlos and Suneil. We where also lucky to have Robin Emley come down to demo his MK2 Surplus PV diverter and lend a helping hand.
Here are a few pictures of everyone getting stuck in with building emontx's and rfm12pi adapter boards:
Carlos and Sebastian who came all the way from Germany going through the Raspberry PI setup process:
Robin Emley helping out above and his solar pv diversion setup below:
The course was held in the beautiful Welsh Institute for Sustainable Education (WISE) building at CAT:
I'm in Manchester this coming weekend (20th April) helping Matt Fawcett and the rest of the Carbon Coop team with their: Ecohome lab launch workshop and build day. Looking forward to it.
Here are a few pictures of everyone getting stuck in with building emontx's and rfm12pi adapter boards:
Carlos and Sebastian who came all the way from Germany going through the Raspberry PI setup process:
Robin Emley helping out above and his solar pv diversion setup below:
The course was held in the beautiful Welsh Institute for Sustainable Education (WISE) building at CAT:
I'm in Manchester this coming weekend (20th April) helping Matt Fawcett and the rest of the Carbon Coop team with their: Ecohome lab launch workshop and build day. Looking forward to it.
Categories: Blog
