Energy monitoring
Hi folks,
Newbie forum member here, though I’ve been following with interest for a month or two since our ASHP installation. I’m looking for a little advice on the most appropriate monitoring setup for my system.
We have:
A new Vaillant AroTherm 12kW ASHP feeding a 300l DHW tank and two central heating zones (upstairs/downstairs, all new rads sized appropriately). There’s a 45l buffer tank and a post-buffer circulation pump for the heating. I currently have very basic info available from sensoAPP (logs of consumption and yield estimates for heating and DHW, but have to manually transcribe. It also measures inside and outside temps but doesn’t seem to log them).
We will soon have (once the DNO permission finally comes back):
A 6.5kW solar array with a GivEnergy inverter and 9.5kWh battery. From seeing friends’ systems, it looks like plenty of data should be forthcoming from the GivEnergy kit.
One minor complication is that the electrical board (including new spur to the heat pump) is inside the house, whereas the pipework, etc is in the garage. DHW tank and heating zone valves are in an upstairs cupboard. So we’re looking at 2/3 separate monitoring locations (perhaps plus an outside temp).
As interesting as it would be, I’m not currently in the market for a level 3 HP monitor (on both cost and plumbing hassle grounds). I’m handy enough with electronics/Arduinos/programming that I’m seeing anything too scary in the emonXX kit.
So, some questions which I hope you can help with (I have done a fair bit of reading, but could really do with a flow chart or something to understand which bits do what and what I might need!):
- Does anyone know of a (less painful) way to extract more of the Vaillant HP’s internal data?
- Is a level 3 system required for heatpumpmonitor.org? (It makes sense to me what it would be, but curious if the Carnot estimate can be used here.)
- If I wanted to set up a level 2 system with say 2 CT sensors (main incoming/HP usage) and 4 or 5 temp inputs, which bits of emon hardware would I need?
- I’m anticipating the solar/battery kit will give me a lot of data. What is the best way to aggregate emon data and GivEnergy data (and ideally even the Vaillant data) in the same place? Or is it better just to add another CT sensor or two to monitor the PV/battery via emon as well? (Feels like a waste of all that nice GivEnergy data!)
- Is emon even the right thing here? Or would I be better just building my own Arduino project to monitor the heat pump temps?
Any input much appreciated, and feel free to question anything I’ve missed.
Cheers,
Jo