We have just installed a Network Owl to monitor our energy usage. This monitors the power being used on our incoming electricity supply and uploads the data to the internet. We can then monitor power usage from anywhere and (pretty much) in real time.
We have a 3 phase supply and are using a Network Owl and Owl Intuition-lc. This solution is intended for home and light commercial premises that are on a three phase supply. The hardware is under £100 and it took less than 30 minutes to set it up.
Creating an online account to view the data is a little quirky, but if you follow the instructions carefully it doesn’t take long.
Having installed a ground source heat pump, all of our heating and domestic hot water is essentially electric albeit aided by extracting heat out of the ground. So we thought it would be important to having an understanding of the amount of power that we are using. This solution looks promising and I am somewhat intrigued by the numbers. By combining the data from the Network Owl with data from our weather station and internal temperature sensors, we should be able to get a reasonable understanding of the heat performance of the house.
Once you have the network owl up and running, you can view your power usage in real time via the web. I only installed it yesterday, so it is a little sparse in terms of data.
As well as getting an overview of power usage, you can also see more detailed graphs as well as downloading the data into Excel (CSV format). Our online weather station also captures weather data as well as monitoring the internal house temperature.
This is a small device that connects to your router (Ethernet connection on the right, power on the left). It connects wirelessly to the sensor box with the three sensors that are clamped onto the incoming 3 phase supply. It then uploads the date to the internet where you can access it online.
The sensor box is installed in the meter cupboard with three sensors – one onto each of the incoming live supplies (we have a 3 phase supply). I may move the sensor box and sensors to cables inside the building as it will be warmer and kinder to the batteries (as well as improving the signal strength to the Network Owl).
The sensor clamps are very easy to install and only loosely clamp onto the cables. You just need to remember that this is a live supply that you are dealing with!