Theoretical power consumption?

[Jhhbe]

hi,

Homeseer is either switching lights on or off or if it doesn't do the switching itself then at least it knows about it.

So for a given device it should be able to tell how long it was on and by simple math how much power was used. Seems like a simple idea but I can't find anything similar and would prefer not starting from scratch.

Any ideas?

jhh

[Rupp]

That's seems like a load of work when you can simply get one of these:
http://store.homeseer.com/store/ENVI...-P903C169.aspx

Not to mention if you do not have every switch ,outlet as well as all external devices like heating and air conditioning units, hot water heaters, etc, automated this calculation wouldn't be very useful.

[mrhappy]

hi,

Homeseer is either switching lights on or off or if it doesn't do the switching itself then at least it knows about it.

So for a given device it should be able to tell how long it was on and by simple math how much power was used. Seems like a simple idea but I can't find anything similar and would prefer not starting from scratch.

Any ideas?

jhh

I doubt you are going to ever get a particularly accurate reading (about the only time would be for a light that is either on/off), but for a rough idea perhaps Jon00's uptime monitor which can be setup to hold a device value which represents the total hours a device has been on.

Then write another script which multiplied this value by the kw/hr price of your electricity and stored it somewhere else.

Working with minutes rather than hours may provide a greater degree of accuracy, but still I think it will be fairly inaccurate..

[bdraper]

Interesting post... You could maybe use one of Jon00 scripts... see http://board.homeseer.com/showthread.php?t=133568

[Jhhbe]

hi,

This one is from my log:

28/09/2010 22:18:38 Device Control Device: Gelijkvloers Garage Licht - auto (A2) OFF

I'm happy with the accuracy and I agree I can only do this for lights but I want to find out what that means in my total power consumption. Also I want to find out if it's worthwhile switching to LED lighting and if so which ones to take first.

I started taking dimmers out because we don't use them that often - lights are mostly on or off with some exceptions. So I wouldn't worry about dimlevels. Any info is better than what I have now.

Jhh

[jon00]

As pointed out by the earlier posts, download my Cumulative Uptime monitoring script from my website.

Set up Device1 to monitor House code A2 using the instructions supplied with the script.

Once this is working, the script below is an example of how you can show the total consumption in Kw/h.

Copy the attached script and save it with a .vb extension to your scripts directory.

Change the DeviceWattage value from 15 to the actual wattage of your lamp.

Every time this script is run, you will see the total consumption used in Kw/h

This data can be added to a virtual device if you want.

Sub Main(ByVal Parm As Object)

' set the wattage of the device to be monitored here in watts
Dim DeviceWattage As Double = 15
hs.run("Jon00uptime.vben")
hs.waitsecs (0.5)
Dim Uptime As Timespan = Timespan.Parse(hs.GetiniSetting("Device1","CurrentUptime","","Jon00Uptime.ini"))
Dim TotalHours As Double = Convert.ToDouble(uptime.totalhours)
Dim Total As Double = TotalHours * DeviceWattage
hs.writelog("Test","The light has been on for a total of " & Math.Round(TotalHours,2) & " hours and has used " & Math.Round(Total,2)/1000 & " KW/h of electricity." )

end sub 

[Steve Q]

I am calculating my power usage with Homeseer. Since about 85% of my power usage is hot water, HVAC, and laundry, I monitor the ON time for each of these devices. I have current sensors connected to a DS10As. See http://board.homeseer.com/showpost.p...7&postcount=42 for a complete description. The DS10A sends ON/OFF signals to Homeseer. I use a script to store the data in a txt file. Whenever I want, I run an excel spreadsheet I put together that calculates total On time for each appliance and adds it all up to give me a total usage per day and for the month. I have been using this for over a year and my calculated results are amazingly close to the actual values from my power company. Below is my spreadsheet for Sept.

I find this approach more usefull than having multiple kill-a-watts around the house. It is also better than a whole house monitoring system. The problem with whole house monitoring is: you don't know what appliances are using the juice! If you want to reduce your power usage, focus on the big users.

Steve Q

[bdraper]

I have attached the chart and devices that I build using Jon00's script for my downstairs HVAC unit. I use this script to monitor my HVAC units. I have devices setup to record run time for Sunday - Saturday for each unit. I also 2 other devices setup to cumulative runtime as well as a device to record filter runtime that allows a reset when I change or clean the filter. I am sure you could find some use for the script it is very flexible.

Let me know if you need the events...