I am new to OpenEnergyMonitor and have set up an EmonPi to monitor my home energy usage. I also have solar PV and a different branded battery (not Tesla or Powerwall) and I want to bring in the battery to allow better tracking and smart energy management.
I currently have tracking on grid import/export and solar generation but I don’t have a clear understanding of the best way to bring the battery into the scope without adding things to report already. Ideally, I would like to see charge/discharge cycles and have a better understanding of when the energy is flowing to/from the battery.
Has anyone been able to implement this with EmonPi? Will I need to add another CT clamp or adjust the inputs in EmonCMS?
I have looked through the documents provided in alteryx training, but I would feel a whole lot more comfortable in hearing from someone who has done this proven before! Any recommendations on tips, wiring diagrams, recommended modules, etc would be great!
Note we have no association with the training company you link to, so we cannot comment on the accuracy or otherwise of any information you obtain from that or any other source. All I can say is any wrong, misleading or misguided information published here is normally picked up very rapidly.
What sort of emonPi do you have - I am guessing and you seem to infer it is the emonPi2 with 6 or 12 CT inputs and an emonVs combined voltage monitor and power supply (and by the way, current transformers are NOT ‘clamps’), rather than the older emonPi with just 2 CT inputs and a 120 V to 9 V a.c. adapter?
The first consideration is, is your battery connected at 120 V or 240 V (which?), and does it connect directly into your load centre via it’s own inverter/battery charger, and does the PV also have its own inverter with it too connected at 120 V or 240 V into your load centre; or does the PV connect directly at d.c. to the battery, and there’s only one connection into your load centre?
If it’s the first scenario (PV and battery connect separately at 120 or 240 V a.c. into your load centre), it’s dead simple to have c.t’s on each and measure them separately, so you see immediately whether the battery is consuming or generating, and whether the PV is contributing all, just some or nothing to your overall consumption.
If it’s the second scenario - it’s somewhere between difficult and impossible without the battery charger telling you (probably via a data bus connection) what it’s doing at any given moment, because trying to measure d.c. current brings a whole host of safety considerations that are difficult and expensive to resolve.
Not knowing what you have in emonCMS, I can’t say what you need to add - but you undoubtedly will need to make some changes and additions.