Solar Monitoring

[AzRoute66]

Truenorth ,

Thanks. Very helpful. The only reason I would consider the extra money to get the second set of CTs is my home office. I have my work computer, her computer, this computer, phones, lamps, printer, plotter, TV, sat receiver, modems, speakers, chargers, - well, you get the point. With few exceptions, these will all appears as part of the bigger 'Unknown Load' blob, and where it can single out something it will do so as 'Heat 12' or somesuch and I really don't care much if it is my monitor or the printer in standby, etc. All of the individual stuff has been Kill-A-Watt'd and categorized to my satisfaction. That said, it would be nice to know how much the entire room fluctuates and adds up, especially as viewed against 'time of day' and .day of week'.

My friend argues that once I see it for a week it will be so predictable it will be boring and I shouldn't waste any money. The sad thing is that he is probably right, I already know quite a bit about our usage, and although I will undoubtedly find a tidbit or two, they will become part of the predictable and thus boring and and wasted money.

[Truenorth]

Rout66,

i see what you are looking for, would be good info to know. This Sense might be over kill to get that reading. I think The Energy Detective (TED) might have something less expensive that could read one set of CT's. Good luck!

[Sunburner]

I would welcome advice on what energy monitors would work, or equally important, would NOT work with my configuration. Here's my situation:

- 200 amp service meter located in yard with breaker panel beneath, with a breaker for the garage and another for the house.
-One line goes from meter to a detached garage with breaker panel, PV panels on roof, inverter (SMA SB 7.7), EV charger for a golf cart
- The other line goes to the house with a panel and sub panel, where nearly all consumption occurs

Question: is there a single monitoring device that will monitor both my PV production and household consumption, or will I need a separate device for each location? For example, Sense says the PV CTs must be within 46 feet of the mains CTs, which won't work in my case, I don't think. Would it be possible to have a single device at the service meter breaker panel, with one set of cts on the line to the garage and another on the line to the house? Or would it require one monitor in the garage, another in the house, connected via wifi or ethernet to my router?

Incidentally, while I have wifi in the house and yard, it does not quite reach inside the garage to the inverter. After a couple of trial and error attempts with extender/repeaters, I finally settled on a pair of Trendnet Powerline 500 AV power line adapters to establish an ethernet connection between the router and inverter. It uses the household writing as an ethernet network and in my case the signal went from my router, through 2 breaker panels, to the main breaker on the pole, and then back to the garage. I was skeptical given the number of breakers the signal passed through (at least 4) but it actually works well.

Just trying to wrap my head around the possibilities of monitoring technology given my configuration.

Thanks for any input.

Gordon