# AC Power/Energy Meter?



## GerhardRP (Nov 17, 2009)

gdirwin said:


> Has anyone used a TED Energy Meter:
> http://www.theenergydetective.com/ted-5000-overview.html
> 
> They have a model which can monitor the entire house (200A panel) as well as a separate panel (ie EV charging panel), store the logs, then communicate it to a PC via an ethernet cable...
> ...


I have one hooked up. I don't have the PC hooked to it via USB. It only keeps summary records in the unit. If you want details, the PC has to be on all the time.
The software supposedly builds profiles of your various appliances using starting surge and running power so you can track useage in detail.
I plan to arrange to monitor my backup genrerator power too... keep from overloading the sucker.
I didn't see a better monitor anywhere
Gerhard.


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## dtbaker (Jan 5, 2008)

I have used a $30 kill-a-watt meter... I kept track of miles and total kWhr to charge for a week to get a good average. There is a significant difference in what it takes to charge including all losses and balance cycles versus what you may measure when rolling... I consistently had to put in about .4kWhr/mile measured at the wall versus the .2-.3kWhr/mile that might be considered average to power my vehicle at 35mph on a flat road.


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## azdeltawye (Dec 30, 2008)

I'm using a standard single phase form 2S Itron Sentinel energy meter. It has an auto-ranging input so I can measure AC energy when plugged into 120V or 240V. See attached meter specs.


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## gdirwin (Apr 7, 2009)

dtbaker said:


> I have used a $30 kill-a-watt meter...


Also a good/cheap solution, but I think only for 120V (my charger is either 120 or 240V).



azdeltawye said:


> I'm using a standard single phase form 2S Itron Sentinel energy meter. It has an auto-ranging input so I can measure AC energy when plugged into 120V or 240V. See attached meter specs.


Have you tried out the serial interface to download info to a PC (logging, graphing etc...)?



GerhardRP said:


> I have one hooked up. I don't have the PC hooked to it via USB. It only keeps summary records in the unit. If you want details, the PC has to be on all the time.
> Gerhard.


Is this the TED5000 series or the older 1000 series? They are compared here:
http://www.theenergydetective.com/media/TED%20Comparison.pdf

I see 3 complaints:
- power line carrier method of communication between the "MTU" (device in your panel and connected to the current sensors) and the "Gateway" device (a separate mini-pc which can log information even without a PC).
- logging/storage on the Gateway could be bigger. The Gateway can store 60 minutes of second-data, 2 days of minute-data, 90 days of hourly-data, 24 months of daily-data, and 10 years of monthly-data.
- many complain that the company got too big/too fast and does not answer e-mails/phones, or respond to fix faulty equipment...

They got a big deal to connect to "Google Power Meter" so seem professional-like...

If you connect a PC (it can communicate by LAN to the Gateway) then you can get real-time data in 1 minute intervals. They also have a wireless client/display that can show graphs etc... Third party apps are also available for IPhone/ITouch etc... for graphing/logging.

Pretty cool (and it should be for the price). I think it would be worth it though, considering it is not just measuring EV AC power input, but also power in the entire house (you can attach up to 4 sets of 120 or 240V current sensors and MTUs).

Gerhard - what has been your experience? How was "Energy, Inc" to work with for customer support (post-sale)?


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## GerhardRP (Nov 17, 2009)

gdirwin said:


> Is this the TED5000 series or the older 1000 series? They are compared here:
> http://www.theenergydetective.com/media/TED Comparison.pdf
> 
> Gerhard - what has been your experience? How was "Energy, Inc" to work with for customer support (post-sale)?


I have the older one. The only installation trick is to be sure the sender and receiver are on the same phase. I did not ask for any post sale service.


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## tomofreno (Mar 3, 2009)

> There is a significant difference in what it takes to charge including all losses and balance cycles versus what you may measure when rolling... I consistently had to put in about .4kWhr/mile measured at the wall versus the .2-.3kWhr/mile that might be considered average to power my vehicle at 35mph on a flat road.


 I haven't seen this. I get around 237 Wh/mile as measured by the EKM meter at AC input to the charger, and around 210 Wh/mile estimated from average pack voltage and Ah used, the latter measured by a TBS E-xpert Pro gauge. This agrees fairly well with the stated 88 - 90% efficiency of the charger. Some of the difference is likely due to the difference in energy dissipation in lead acid batteries and LiFePO4 cells during charge and discharge (Peukert).


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## dtbaker (Jan 5, 2008)

tomofreno said:


> I haven't seen this. I get around 237 Wh/mile as measured by the EKM meter at AC input to the charger, and around 210 Wh/mile estimated from average pack voltage and Ah used, the latter measured by a TBS E-xpert Pro gauge. This agrees fairly well with the stated 88 - 90% efficiency of the charger. Some of the difference is likely due to the difference in energy dissipation in lead acid batteries and LiFePO4 cells during charge and discharge (Peukert).


very interesting!
I am guessing that the Peukert's is a large part of that, but probably more due to the Zivan charge cycle for Pb ALWAYS runs a 'balance' voltage after the cells are full. That extra time over-voltage to bring the Pb up to gassing could well be a lot of the extra energy.... kinda like if a Li system had a shunting system that was burning off a lot of heat in a badly unbalanced Li pack.

I am installing a Cycle Analyst while I still have Pb pack, and ought to be able to get a great comparison of running W-hr on Pb versus Li; except I am bumping up pack voltage to 120v, so it won't quite be apples-apples.


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## azdeltawye (Dec 30, 2008)

gdirwin said:


> Have you tried out the serial interface to download info to a PC (logging, graphing etc...)?


No. I only used the serial interface to program the meter. 
But you can grab real time telemetry data from both the serial port or the internal RF transmitter used for AMR (Automatic Meter Reading).


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