The main consumer unit inside our house does not have any spare ways and is located on an internal wall from where it would be almost impossible to cleanly run the cable so, our install will feature an external cable run to the ASHP, approximately 13 metres from a consumer unit in a secondary meter box.
The control unit and pumps will be installed in the airing cupboard on the first floor where the cylinder will be located.
Is there somewhere practical to install the ASHP electricity meter (SDM120) close to the heat pump, rather than at the consumer unit? I’m assuming there will need to be a cable run to the USB modbus reader? Could that be attached to the pipework coming into the house and going up to the airing cupboard?
If the meter is best placed in the consumer unit in the meter box outside then I would consider using EV Ultra cable for that external run.
Perhaps a simpler alternative would be to use a pair of something like the Shelly Pro 1PM to monitor the consumption of the external and internal components.
Yes, it’s quite common for the meter to be installed next to the heat pump with the meter in a small metal enclosure. We can supply a metal enclosure as an option on the Level 3 bundle.
The heat meter needs to be installed on the primary pipework (flow and return from the heat pump) before the diverter valve which splits off DHW and space heating. The heat meter can be anywhere on the primary pipework.
By default, the monitoring measures both DHW and space heating together, it’s not able to distinguish. There are some methods to do this, but non are standard and vary between HPs
