[ale] Monitoring Total Household Electricity Consumption

[Scott M. Jones]

I have the Blue Line Innovations Power Cost Monitor.  It is a purely
optical solution that straps around your meter, using an IR LED that's
present on the newer digital meters (but it can also see the black mark
on the rotating disk if you have an older meter).  I have the non-cloud
version but they also now have a cloud-accessible version.  Don't know
what the Linux compatibility might be.  And if you export
moment-to-moment power data to the cloud, third party doctrine would apply.

You could also build an inductive meter with an Arduino, but you would
need to separate out the legs of your power some way either in your
feeder cable or in the power box (assuming you have single phase 220).
Riskier and not necessarily up to code.

-Scott

On 2/9/16 4:21 PM, Greg Clifton wrote:
> GA Power has several rate plans available these days. The newest they
> are promoting is the so called "Smart Usage" rate plan. The off peak
> rates are even cheaper than the plug in electric vehicle plan, but the
> gotcha is that they charge $6.53/kWh for the peak 30 minutes of
> consumption  each month, both peak (June-Sept) and off peak.
> 
> The GA Power web site allows me to monitor daily usage, but does not
> provide the 30 minute granularity necessary to calculate if this rate
> would save or cost me $. Which prompted this email to see if anybody on
> the list has a suggestion of an affordable device or Rpi project that
> could log my power consumption on a minute by minute basis.
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> Greg Clifton