$129 Charge Power Monitor with Live Online Data Logging?

Thought I'd share this since the topic had come up a few times, maybe someone will find it interesting and/or useful

Don't have a PHEV, but just ordered one of these to monitor whole house power usage in real time over the web. It was the only one I could find that supported the 3-phase power service we have at home, and is well supported by the community at pvoutput.org. Its accuracy is also supposed to be among the best for these type of consumer class clamp on devices according to a number of user reviews / forum comments.

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With the EnviR + web bridge you could log and live monitor charging at home (120 or 240V) for $189, though to view the data online you have get a subscription to their web service. There is supposedly a way to redirect the web bridge data to the free pvoutput.org so you could monitor live data at least when charging at home. You'd have to look to forum support for this, as manufacturer wants you to buy their service. Its possible this doesn't work for the US version, but I haven't investigated too much as I'm not planning to use the web bridge.

I went with the standard EnviR kit at $129, which can be connected to a computer via usb for data logging and live data monitoring to pvoutput.org. I'm planning to use the open source pvbeancounter as the interface to grab and upload the data. The transmitter is battery powered, but unfortunately the display unit requires 120V power (or DC of an as of yet unknown voltage) and this is where the data logging happens. So to do this for non-home charging you'd have to be able to power up the display one way or another to log the data (battery, dc power from Prius, AC inverter in Prius, or a plug within wireless range). Then you could grab/upload the data when you get home, or I suppose if you wanted to get really fancy use a 3G netbook or something to upload live mobile charging data

Note that as PriusKitty discovered, you have to be able to get at just the "hot" line (or lines for 240V) which is perhaps easier at home than when on the road unless you make some sort of "adapter" cable as I believe PK did, or modify your charger cable

If anyone cares, here's what I'm doing with it

I've just gotten my 5.5kW solar install online, and logging data to pvoutput.org:
Smith Family Solar 5.520kW

I have an old laptop setup to communicate with the inverter via bluetooth, and use a free script called SMA Uploader to publish the live data every 5 minutes. I've also just gotten pvoutput configured to grab the live weather data from my home weather station, which publishes to weather underground. To add live power consumption data to pvoutput, I bought the following:

2x Standard EnviR kit (display + transmitter + 2 current sensors)
2x IAM (wall socket monitor)
2x current sensor (to max out transmitters at 3 sensors each)
1x USB cable

I emailed costcurrent.com to inquire about a package discount, and they offered 10% off plus free shipping since I was buying a bunch of stuff.

One display will be in the house, so we can see live usage data locally. The other display will be in the workshop attached to the same laptop via USB for data logging and publishing to the web. I'll be using the free pvbeancounter software to grab the solar and EnviR data, calibrate the EnviR data if necessary, calculate total consumption (as in my case it will measure net total-solar production) and upload the live data to pvoutput as well as saving a local copy of the full data set to my server.

One transmitter with 3 sensors will be used to monitor the main utility service feed, this will be "net" consumption as my solar feeds into the bottom of the main panel. The second transmitter, also with 3 sensors will be used to monitor the 3-phase heat pump. Once I have a good idea of the heat pumps demand, I will likely re-purpose this one to the pool pump or something else as I can monitor AC on/off state via a script that polls my wifi thermostat (best $99 I ever spent?). The outlet monitors will be used to characterize various loads around the house, with one possibly dedicated to the fridge.

Rob

 

BTW best support I've found for using this device with pvoutput seems to be at:
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum/143

pvoutput.org is an Aussie run site

 

Yeah, it seems like a pretty cool site. Nice that its free, and that people have figured out ways to support a wide variety of devices on it.

Its worth noting too that I believe you can use it even if you don't have a PV system, so if a PiP owner wanted to use it to just track charge power consumption with a device like above for example that should work.

Rob