I am doing a fairly large project with all new hvac as well as building a home theater and my energy consumption has always been through the roof. I average 2,000 KWH a month already and my new additions may cause it to increase. I had an electrician laying out wires tell me I have some type of electrical problem, because 2,000 KWH is way too much for what I am using. He said I should install an electrical monitoring system to figure out where the power is going.
I have see a bunch of plug in ones that you have to manually plug everything in but I don’t want to do that. i also see the energy detective that has mixed views.I went through Energy Monitoring Video to know more but wasn’t satisfied.
To answer the question in the title you’ve given this thread - lots of people around here do, because this is an energy monitoring website.
I suggest you browse around this website, and visit the shop page, then come back here and ask any particular questions that have arisen. In particular, look at the “Use in North America” page in the "Learn"section under “AC Power Theory”.
I guess what you’ve got to do is (a) check that your meter is reading correctly, then monitor each circuit or groups of circuits in your load centre until you come across something that seems abnormal, and drill down from there.
I’m in the UK, but one of my moderator colleagues is in Oklahoma, and he’s much more familiar with US practice.
An emonPi will monitor both legs of your supply and keep a record that you can view on a web browser, but it has only two inputs to measure current, and I suspect you might want more. You can add one or more emonTx’s (4 more currents each) if you want (but that might not be necessary).
If you’re happy (and have time) to build the electronics, we can point you at other designs having more inputs, all broadly based on the OEM concept and designs, and as far as I know, compatible.
2000kWh a month represents a continuous load of about 2.7 kW. Probably not hard to do if - as Bill suggests - it’s an all-electric home and especially if there’s an overlap between heating and air conditioning.
Definitely not hard to do. I’m in Oklahoma and my highest bill was for 4029 kWh.
The next two months were for 2266 and 2348 kWh. The timeframe was Dec '12 to Feb '13.
(I have an all-electric house, which is why I asked the question)
definitely not hard to do-- I live in “brisk” Manitoba though my home does not currently consume that much NOW after I green my infrastructure for a fully electric house - It uses about 6000 kW per year 1/2 of that only during 3 months in the winter time. but prior to greening it was easily ~30,000 kwh per year on a standard conventional house set-up and that would be considered an average consumption for a house my size -But I know people who easily use 10,000 kwh in a month in the winter time ( poor house construction - drafty and not well insulated)
